


Chasing Firebugs

by artistfingers



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: AU, Angst, FtM!Amy, M/M, Rory is gay, Spoilers for all of S5, buckets and buckets of angst, but also angst, fluffy fluff, growing up story, instances of transphobic characters, oh but also fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 12:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 44,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artistfingers/pseuds/artistfingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rory is gay, Amelia - Adrian - is female to male transgender, and everything is fine. For the most part, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing Firebugs

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE NOTE. I am not trans, nor am I British. There may be factual errors. I did the research I could, but please, please, please tell me if I got something wrong, whether in wording or facts or anything else.
> 
> That said, let me have a quick moment to say: I first started thinking about this idea nine months ago, August 2012; I didn't write it, though, until the middle of November 2012 during - yes - National Novel Writing Month. Finished it with 30k, and spent the past four/five months rereading it, editing, adding, and rewriting. It's now 44k, making it my longest fanfic ever. Wow! And it only took nine months. So this, essentially, is my baby. So. I hope you enjoy!

**Seven**

 

With her Aunt Sharon out for the night, Amelia thought it would be the perfect opportunity to cut her hair. Not that she disliked her hair—she did like it. She liked the color, which was a bright red, and the texture. She just didn’t like the length, which was nearly down to the middle of her back.

 

There were many reasons why she disliked the length it was at. There were a lot of reasons why she wanted it short. The worst part was that her Aunt Sharon absolutely refused to let her get it cut, so it looked like Amelia would have to do it herself.

 

She sat, now, on the edge of the bathtub. She held in her right hand a large pair of silver sewing scissors—her aunt’s, of course. They had a pink ribbon tied on them, and Amelia would never be caught with any pink ribbon on anything of hers—and her long red hair in a low pony tail, and the blades of the scissors ready to chop through it, just above the elastic.

 

Most people would feel nervous when they were about to cut off their hair. Amelia wasn’t nervous.

 

Snip, went the scissors. Amelia was forced to hold them at an awkward angle, elbow above her head in order to reach. Snip, they went again, and again and again until she could feel the weight of it lessening and lessening until it fell of completely. The hair landed with soft _thwump_ into the bathtub behind her, and her newly-short hair brushed against the back of her neck.

 

Amelia grinned and stood and looked in the mirror.

 

Oh. It was extremely uneven and choppy—so choppy, in fact, that half of her ear was visible on the left, but the one on the right was still covered by her red hair, and that was not good at all. She frowned at the reflection in the mirror, then pulled a face, and then stuck out her tongue. She lifted the scissors again, and lifted the hair from over her ear. She held it straight out and began to cut it.

 

There was an odd noise from outside—a sort of growing wheeze or whoosh, or a sound like a reversed clapping: something that faded in quickly and went suddenly to a crescendo and then stopped, but longer and drawn out.

 

“What?” she said aloud to nobody. The noise persisted, and then there was a crash—something hitting the earth, hard, something breaking, and a tinkling like glass on tile next. Amelia put down her aunt’s silver scissors beside the sink and hurried from the bathroom to push aside the curtains of her bedroom window.

 

The shed in the front garden had collapsed. A large blue box had fallen on it. Naturally, she needed to investigate. It had fallen into _her_ garden, after all. And maybe it had something to do with the prayer she had sent earlier that evening—a prayer for someone to come and fix the crack in her wall. With a grin, she grabbed her torch from the nightstand and hurried down the stairs, out the front door in nothing but her pajama pants and an over large t –shirt, and then over to the box.

 

She approached the box without caution, simply walking right over. “Hello?” she called, pointing the beam of her torch at the blue box, and then the shed which was ruined and in pieces beneath it. Aunt Sharon would not be pleased to discover that their shed had been crushed. They hadn’t used it so far, in the past month they had lived in Leadworth, but there were plenty of things in it, and Aunt Sharon had been weird about the disused shed. She had complained and complained about it, but when Amelia suggested the buy a new one, Aunt Sharon had said _absolutely not_. Amelia did not understand her aunt most days.

  
The two doors flew open outwards on the top of the box; Amelia took a step backward and watched as, slowly, a man—dressed in raggedly clothing, full of holes and fitting him oddly, hoisted himself out. He sat on the edge of the box and looked down into the box from which he’d just climbed.

 

“Look at that! What a mess!” he said, sounding gleeful. Amelia only knew one person who would be happy because of a mess, and that was herself.  

 

“Hello?” Amelia said, since the man had yet to notice her. He seemed to notice her then for the first time.

 

“Hello!” he replied. “This isn’t very brilliant, you know, but it feels a bit brilliant. All…engery-y-y. Oh, that’s too many –y’s. And new-y.” And then, he paused, and asked, “Can I have an apple?”

 

“Well…yeah. Are you the police?”

 

“No. I’d never be the police.”

 

“Then how come your box says police?” Amelia asked.

 

“Stuck like that!” he patted the box. “And I sort of liked it so I kept it.” He swung one leg over the edge of the box, straddling it, and then the other. He then lost his balance and fell face forward onto the ground. “Auuch,” he groaned. His body bent oddly at the back and placed his hand over his heart or, well—one heart—fingers clenched, as though his hearts were hurting him.

 

Amelia stepped forward. “Are you alright?” she asked.

 

“Fine, yes, fine, this is all perfectly—normal,” the man wheezed out. He clenched his jaw shut, and then reopened it. A sort of golden dust appeared in an elegant swirl.

 

“If your box says police, did you come about the crack in my wall?” Amelia asked.

 

“Did you call for the police?”

 

“Yeah,” said Amelia. “Well. Sort of.”

 

“Brilliant, then. How about that apple? Because I think I’m having a craving, which is new—never had a craving before—and then I shall police that crack in your wall for you. Yeah?” He pushed himself onto his feet and grinned down at Amelia. Amelia grinned back.  

 

 

XXX

 

 

In the kitchen, finally sitting down (with fish fingers and custard, of all things), the not –a –police –man said, “What’s your name?”

 

Since there was nobody there to stop her, Amelia was eating ice cream straight out of the tub with the scoop. She had been licking the ice cream from it when the man asked her this, so she put it down to reply, “Amelia Pond,”

 

“Good name, Amelia Pond.” He licked the custard off of a fish finger. “Like a name in a fairy tale. Brilliant.”

 

“It’s not brilliant. I hate it,” she told him in a moment of sullen confidence.

 

“Hmmm?”

  
“My name. Amelia. I hate it. And I don’t want to be in a fairy tale, either. I don’t want to be a princess.”

 

“You don’t have to be the princess,” said the strange man. “Nobody said anything about princesses. You could be the fairy godmother, with the magic to fix everything. Or the knight in shining armor who saves the day. _Or_. You could even be the prince. You could be anything you want, Pond.”

 

Amelia thought about this. “Maybe being a prince or a knight wouldn’t be so bad.”

 

He grinned through and took a large bite of his fish finger. He ate the majority of it in the one mouthful, and chewed it for a long time, with ridiculously exaggerated movements. Amelia watched him.

 

“If you could be called anything in the world,” said the man eventually, “then what would you be called?”

 

“I don’t know,” said Amelia.

 

“I call myself the Doctor. You could call yourself whatever you like, too.”

 

“The Doctor? That’s not a name, that’s a title.”

“Well, it’s not title because it’s my name,” he said. Amelia licked some more of the ice cream on the ice cream scoop. “Hmmm. What good names are there? Ica. Yzanica. Karen. Carrie. Hmmm. Gina? Jessica? Hshhhss?”

 

“That one’s not even a name,” Amelia told him, laughing. She was surprised that he had suggested she call herself something that was only a combination of meaningless syllables. “It’s not even a word.”

 

“It is on Reoook Seven,” He almost looked wounded that she didn’t believe him about that.

 

“And anyways,” she said. “Those are all girls’ names.”

 

“Don’t you want a girl’s name?”

 

Amelia looked at him. “No.”

“So would you rather have a boy’s name?”

 

“Yes,” she said, resolute. This was something she had thought a lot about recently.

 

“Well. You could be Rick. Or Brad, or Bradley, or Stanley, or Kanley, Fanley, Ranley, Ganley. Hmmm. John? Harry? Harold? Oh—No, no, no, not Harold. Forget Harold. Oh, Wilfred. I knew a Wilfred. Amazing bloke.” He looked at the expression Amelia was making, which was rather scrunched. “Don’t like any of those names either?”

 

“No,” she said.

 

“Well, what names _do_ you like?”

 

“I like…Ian. And Isaac. Eric. Aaron. Adrian.”

 

“Adrian,” said the Doctor. “I think that fits you.”

 

“…you do?” Suddenly feeling shy, but also extremely pleased, Amelia smiled.

 

“Course! You would make a great Adrian.” The Doctor learned forward as he said this. He looked too sincere for Amelia to doubt him further, so she didn’t.

 

She fell silent instead, turning over the idea in her mind—she could be Adrian instead of being Amelia, if she wanted. Eventually, though, she had to return to a topic of more immediate importance, so she said, “Can you help me fix my hair? It’s not even _at all_.”

 

And this led them upstairs. And while Amelia sat, facing the sink, on the edge of the tub, the Doctor stood behind her, cutting her hair and chatting away.  Eventually the crack in the wall was brought up again and—of course. Though they _had_ forgotten it once, so it wasn’t impossible to forget again—the Doctor can fix it He’s a doctor, after all, and fixing things was his forte. He managed to fix Amelia’s hair, after all. And she had thought it had looked pretty unfixable.

 

 

XXX

 

 

When he first met Adrian, Rory thought he was a girl. He was quickly corrected. Having learned his lesson after a swift knock to the head (from Adrian, of course), Rory attempted to catch up him, since he was hurrying out of the playground area and towards the line of trees that stood in front of the wooden picket fence. The fence had been put up by the owners of the house that stood beside the park because they had been tired of little kids in their yard.

 

“I’m really sorry,” said Rory, catching up with him. “It’s just that you look a lot like a girl. And Adrian could be Adrianna—I, I mean, it’s really close to it, which is a girl’s name.”

 

“Which _Adrian_ is not!” snapped Adrian, spinning around. “Because it’s my name, and I’m not a girl.”

 

Rory glanced at what Adrian was wearing. It was very far from anything girly, true. He was wearing denim jeans that had holes at the knees and near the bottom, along a torn button up shirt and a badly knotted tie with blue swirls on it, and battered sneakers. It was an odd combination. He still looked a bit like a girl, though, even with all the odd clothing, because of the chubby cheeks and big eyes that he had. Rory now knew better than to point that out again, though. So he said, “Why are you dressed like that?”

 

It seemed the Rory had stumbled upon the golden question, because Adrian’s face lit up. “I’m playing Raggedy Doctor.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“Well, I’m the Doctor, who is alien,” he expanded. (Rory thought that the costume did not look very alien.) “I go zooming around time and space in my time machine.” Adrian pointed to a cardboard box, painted blue, which had fallen on its side by the picket fence. Rory saw the words ‘ _police box_ ’ painted on the side in black. “And I have this!” Adrian continued. He produced a long, thin silver thing—blue at one end—from his jeans pockets.

 

“What’s it supposed to be?” Rory asked, reaching for it for a better look, but Adrian pulled his hand back, out of Rory’s reach. “Sorry.”

 

“It’s a sonic screwdriver,” said Adrian. “It fixes things!”

 

Rory considered the screwdriver for a moment. “What, anything at all?”

 

“Yup,” nodded Adrian. “No matter what.”

 

“Even a brain? Or a heart?”

 

“Anything.”

 

“Even a computer, or a torch, or a glass that shattered into a billion million pieces?”

 

Adrian rolled his eyes, seeming a bit impatient with the list that Rory was providing. “I said _anything_ , didn’t I?”

 

Rory thought that having a sonic screwdriver would have been rather nice, last week, when he’d dropped a glass cup and it had shattered all over the place. His mum had yelled at him for a long time, which hadn’t been any fun, and then Rory had had to sweep up all the shards. “That’s really brilliant,” said Rory. “I wish I had one.”

 

“Well, maybe one day you can be the Doctor,” said Adrian. “And then you can have a sonic screwdriver.” This time, he held it out to Rory.

 

“Amelia!” a woman yelled, over near the playground, before Rory could take the sonic screwdriver. Adrian shoved it in his pocket, now. “Amelia! It’s time to go!” She was waving her hand, beckoning to Adrian. Rory turned around to see who was calling.

 

“Coming!” yelled Adrian.

 

“Is that your mum?” asked Rory. “Why’d she call you Amelia? That’s a girl’s name. And you’re Adrian—you said so.”

 

“No, that’s my Aunt Sharon,” said Adrian grumpily. “She calls me Amelia ‘cause that’s what my parents named me when I was born, but _now_ I’m Adrian.”

 

“But why would they have named you a girl’s name?” Rory asked, following Adrian over to the cardboard box.

 

Adrian turned the box right side up. He pulled off his tie over his head and quickly unbuttoned his shirt. Underneath, he was wearing a faded red shirt that had a large picture of an owl on it. It was rather large on him.

 

“Bye, Rory,” said Adrian, ignoring his question. “I have to go.” And then, picking up his blue box, Adrian left.

 

“Bye,” said Rory, and watched him hurry towards the parking lot, still feeling faintly confused.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Rory’s parents had decided together that they should go greet the small family that had moved into the house down the road where Jack had used to live. Jack had been Rory’s best friend, but now Rory hadn’t seen him in almost six months.

 

The end of the school year had been dull without his best mate. The first half of summer had been lonely. And now there was someone else in Jack’s house: eating in his kitchen, sleeping in his room or his brother’s or his parents’. It was a weird thought for Rory. It was also thought that he was thinking as he stared at his shoes, standing on the front step that led to the front door of the house on the corner of the street that no longer belonged to Jack’s family.

 

“Come on, Rory,” said his dad, clapping him on the shoulder. “Cheer up! They might have a little boy around your age, too. ” 

 

Rory was holding the pie that his mother had baked to give to the newcomers. She knocked on the door now, and Brian put his hand briefly on the top of Rory’s head. Rory scowled at him, and then at the pie, which was in a pie tin—of course—with plastic wrap covering the top, misting up from the heat of the pie.

 

The door was opened by a tall woman with dark hair twisted up into a bun. She smiled, but to Rory, it looked strained and tired. “Yes, hello?” she said.

 

“Hello,” said Rory’s mum. “I’m Ida, and this is my husband Brian—”

 

“Hullo,” said Brian, with a sort of small and partially aborted wave.

 

“—and my son, Rory. We live down the road, and just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.”

 

“Mum baked you a pie,” Rory said, because he felt like he had to say something.

 

“Oh, that’s wonderful,” said the woman. “I’m Sharon. Please, come in.” She showed them to the kitchen and took the pie from Rory, and put it on the kitchen table, which was in the center of the kitchen. Sharon told them to sit down if they liked, and that she’d be right back. Rory sat and poked the pie through its plastic covering until his mother softly told him off for that, because it was no longer their pie.

 

Sharon returned with Adrian.

 

“Oh,” said Adrian. “Hullo, Rory,”

 

“Hullo,” said Rory. “I didn’t know you lived here.” Suddenly, it wasn’t so bad that there was a stranger in Jack’s house, because that stranger was Adrian.

 

“Do you already know Amelia?” asked Sharon, a hand on the shoulder of Adrian, who made a face at the name.

 

“We met in the park the other day,” said Adrian. He pulled away from Sharon’s hand.  “Come along, Rory,” he said, and then turned and hurried from the room. Rory  scooted his chair and, hopped down, and followed.

 

“Play nice,” his father called after him. Rory, however, was already climbing the stairs after Adrian, who led him to a room on the second story which had previously been Jack’s dad’s study. Now there was a large bed protruding from the middle of one wall, and a dresser across from it and a desk adjacent to the door and across from the window, which looked out on the front garden and a shed that was in ruins. It was hardly recognizable as a shed. It was just a pile of wood and things.

 

The walls were covered with all sorts of things. Above the desk, several photographs were pinned up. Above the dresser was a crooked line, all the way across, of paintings and drawings in marker or crayon. Rory saw pictures that could have been Adrian, and several of blue boxes, and one of a tall man in a button up shirt riddled with holes and holding a silver thing, blue at the end, who must have been the Raggedy Doctor.

 

Adrian explained the story of the Raggedy Doctor to him when he asked. He decided that Adrian had a very vivid imagination, and liked that about him.

 

“And the Doctor’s coming back,” said Adrian. “He promised. Five minutes.”

 

Rory didn’t have the heart to point out that, if this had happened several weeks ago, then it had been much longer than five minutes. “You’re really good at drawing,” he said instead, pointing to the crooked row of pictures hung up. “Do you want to be an artist when you grow up?”

 

“No,” said Adrian. “I don’t think so. I just want to be…me, I think. Yeah. That sounds pretty good to me.”

 

 

XXX

 

**Ten**

Sometime along the way before Rory was ten, he realized that Adrian wasn’t a boy had been named Amelia by his parents but called himself Adrian but was, in fact, a girl who was named Amelia but told everyone that he was a boy named Adrian. Rory found that this discovery didn’t change anything. After all, as long as Rory had known Adrian, Adrian had been Adrian to him, not Amelia. Adrian was only Amelia to Sharon and to their teachers, and—only at first—Rory’s parents. They eventually got into the habit of saying Adrian, like Rory, rather than saying Amelia, despite the fact that that was how they had been introduced.

 

Their classmates didn’t get it, mainly because they’d never heard Adrian called Amelia by Sharon. By the middle of the school year, all their teachers had gotten used to saying Adrian, rather than Amelia, which was printed on the attendance sheets.  

 

So, since their peers didn’t seem to get them—or even try to—Rory was getting used to the idea that from there on out, it would be him and Adrian against the world. For example, it was usually just the two of them, Adrian and Rory, walking between their street and school each day. But today was different, because Adrian had invited Mels to walk with them.

 

Rory wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Mels had always seemed a little weird to him. She was new this year, like Adrian had been three years ago, and she was rude to everyone (except for Adrian and Rory, it seemed) which sort of rubbed Rory the wrong way. Up till this point, he’d never met anybody who was genuinely rude or mean. (Adrian had always told off those who tried to pick on him, and in turn, Adrian was never really bullied either because the bullies were a little bit afraid of Adrian and his sharp tongue.)

 

“…so,” said Rory, feeling something that could have very nearly been jealousy (but at what exactly, he had no idea) since neither Adrian nor Mels were saying much, and it made the entire atmosphere feel rather awkward. “What, um...you’re our age, right?”

 

Mels laughed and laughed. Rory didn’t know what was so amusing about that question. “Yes,” she said, and left it at that.

 

“Where’d you live before you moved here to Leadworth?” Rory asked, since Adrian did not seem to want to contribute anything to the conversation at the moment. He was digging through his bag as he walked, and that apparently took most of his attention.

 

“I lived in America. New York.” said Mels and—again—left it at that. She wasn’t very talkative, Rory supposed, and perhaps a little bit shy as well.

 

“You don’t sound American.” Adrian said.

 

“I’m not.”

 

“You’re not?”

 

“I’m British.”

 

“Then how come you lived in America?”

 

To this, Mels only shrugged.

 

“Oh,” Adrian said. “I just remembered—” he stopped and pulled a paper from his bag, bent over to smooth it out against his leg and then brandished it triumphantly in the air above his head. “A-ha! Found it.” he said. He handed it to Mels. “Mels, look. This is the Doctor.”

 

 Mels stopped walking as well, studying the drawing in her hands. Rory almost ran into her shoulder, and just barely avoided collision.

 

“The Doctor,” she repeated. She opened her mouth like she was going to say, but then hesitated. She asked, “Who’s the Doctor?”

 

“The _Doctor_ ,” said Rory. Adrian looked at Mels like she was absolutely blind for not knowing who the Doctor was. However, Adrian—unlike Rory—was able to suppress his instinctive reaction of merely echoing the name back to her.

 

“He’s an alien,” Adrian said instead, pulling the drawing back from Mels.. “He’s got a blue box that he travels around time and space in. And he’s _amazing._ ”

 

Mels grinned, a small thing that started with the crinkling of her eyes and was followed by the smug upwards pulling of the corners of her mouth. “Brilliant,” she said.

 

 

XXX

 

 

All of the children filed into their classroom when the bell rang, only to find their teacher missing, and—in her place—an old man, with sand-colored hair on the sides of his head but none on top, wearing a polo shirt and nice jeans, despite the warm weather of the beginning of the school year.

 

“Please take your seats,” he said. “Please take your seats!” His name was already on the white board behind him: _Mr. Brossi_.

 

“Where’s Mrs. Traggati?” Adrian leaned over and asked Rory, who didn’t know, so he shrugged.

 

“Please be quiet,” said Mr. Brossi. “Please be quiet, children!”

 

Adrian raised his eyebrows at the substitute teacher. “So he says everything twice,” he said, still leaning over to Rory. “Brilliant. That’s brilliant.”

 

“I will take roll now,” said Mr. Brossi, “So please sit in your correct seat. Correct seats, everyone! Or you’ll be marked absent, and you wouldn’t want to be marked absent when you’re actually present.”

 

Adrian groaned at the ceiling and sunk down in his seat. Rory winced in sympathy for him, understanding the situation.

 

Once he had secured the correct paper for roll call from the messily piled papers that Mrs. Traggati had left on the desk, Mr. Brossi went down the rows, reading names:

 

“Geoff Alboci?”

 

“Here,”

 

“Rebecca Courtesan?”

 

“Here,”

 

“Jenny Fill?”

 

“Here.”

 

“Shane Kerroys?”

 

“Yeah, I’m here.”

 

And so on. Adrian had pulled himself up in his seat, back straight and hands fisted under his desk.

 

“Helen Ounteb?”

 

“Here,”

 

“Amelia Pond?”

 

Rory could have sworn that the room had gone completely silent. It hadn’t, of course, but that was how it felt.

 

“Here,” said Adrian, strong, confident, and after only a short pause.

 

Mr. Brossi marked his sheet, just as he had for every other name he had called, and moved along.

 

“Are you—” started Rory, hushed.

 

“It’s no big deal,” said Adrian.

  
Rory didn’t push him; instead, he quietly worried about what would happen now that the other kids _knew_. He began to spin wild, crazy fantasies, theories about Adrian being horribly teased about his birth name, or—worse—forced to wear dresses or skirts. (Not that Rory particularly wanted to imagine Adrian in a dress or a skirt, or doing any girly things, mainly because those things would make Adrian unhappy; anyway, Adrian was one of the least girly people that Rory knew. Actually, Rory would go so far as to say that Adrian _was_ the least girly person he knew.)

 

But, as it turned out, Rory had nothing to worry about, because other than a few glances and heads turned there were no comments or other immediate reactions from their classmates. Well, perhaps there were a few silent stares, but those could be ignored.

 

At break time that day, Mels sat herself down beside Adrian at the lunch table and with a look that screamed that she was completely confident in herself, said, “Amelia, huh?”

 

“What of it?” snapped Adrian, glaring at her.

 

“Nothing,” said Mels, still grinning widely. Adrian did not relent in his glaring. “Just that—if you’re a boy, why did the substitute call you Amelia?”

 

“That’s what my parents named me when I was born,” said Adrian, wondering if he would have to get used to answering this question. “But I’m Adrian.”

 

“Right,” said Mels, and laughed a bit. “Yes. Of course.”

 

“Really,” said Adrian.

 

“ _Really_ really,” insisted Rory on Adrian’s behalf.

 

“I believe you,” said Mels. Rory thought she seemed sincere in saying that, somehow, which didn’t make much sense—but, yes, sincere all the same. “Oh! Did you see, last night on telly, the new episode of Cavertam?”

 

“Yeah, yeah! I love that show,” said Adrian.

 

“It’s not that great,” said Rory. His comment sparked glares from both Adrian and Mels, and they sprang to defend the animated show about _flying cats_ , of all things, _really_ , which Rory suffered through graciously because it was better than having a discussion on the topic of ‘boy or girl’.

 

“Hey,” said Chase, appearing at the edge of their lunch table. Adrian glanced up at him; Rory swallowed his half-chewed lump of sandwich with a gulp, and Mels hardly took notice of the newcomer to their lunch table.

 

Chase was not the nicest boy in Rory and Adrian’s class. Actually, he was very far from it; he was one of the meanest, not only of the class, but also of the grade, so that was pretty darn nasty. Chase was the kind of kid who lived up to his name. (He actually _chased_ people, for goodness’ sake. It was like his parents just didn’t care, and let him run wild!) He and his two friends, who were almost equally as bad as Chase, were the ones who Rory had long ago made a mental note to stay away from.

 

“Hi,” said Mels after a moment of halted conversation once it was clear that both Adrian and Rory were content to ignore the boy who was (attempting to) tower over them, because—apparently—Rory isn’t telepathic and was therefore unable to get his frantic message of _‘Abort! Abort!’_ to Mels before she said anything.

 

But Chase only took this as an invitation to continue. Ignoring Mels, he locked his eyes on Adrian. As he sat down across from Adrian (completely disregarding Rory’s personal space in the process) he said, “So—that substitute today. Whacky or what?”

 

Adrian looked at him. Took a bite of his apple, didn’t respond.

 

But Chase was perfectly capable of keeping this conversation going by himself. “I mean,” he laughed. “Completely whacky! He called you Amelia.”

 

“Yeah,” said Adrian eventually.

 

“Why’d he do something _barmy_ like that?”

 

“My theory is that Mrs. Traggati has _really_ bad handwriting,” Mels said.

 

“Then why didn’t you correct him when he read it wrong?”  Chase glanced at Mels, and then to Rory, and then went back to staring down Adrian. “You totally could have.”

 

Chase was all well-meaning innocence. Rory didn’t buy it for a moment, and he could see that Adrian was getting a bit suspicious as well. Mels, however, had never seen Chase work away at someone before; she’d never seen the way he’d be their friend and then, by the end of the game, the truth would be revealed: he had only been digging up dirt to spread around later. Mels had no reason to be distrustful of Chase.

 

When he didn’t get any sort of response, Chase’s carefully glib expression morphed into something that was closer to a sneer.

 

“You know what I think is why?” he asked, his voice now edging onto the sarcasm spectrum. “Because that’s your actual name. Amelia. Why do you tell everyone your name’s Adrian if you’re a girl, Amelia?”

 

“That’s not true,” said Rory. He felt hot, just underneath the surface of his skin—on his face and on his arms—with irritation, or frustration, or nerves. He didn’t know which, but it made his skin prickle uncomfortably.

 

“It wasn’t worth it to argue with the substitute,” said Adrian. “It would’ve just gotten out of hand.”

 

“No, no, right,” said Chase, still sarcastic. He rolled his eyes. “Wouldn’t want that. I bet you really hate arguing, Amelia, or fighting. After all, most girls do.”

 

“I’m not a girl!” said Adrian, just managing to keep his voice from getting too loud or too squeaky.

 

Chase stood, then, and leaned across the table to take Mels’s plastic bag of cookies. “Right,” he said, smirking at Adrian. He opened up the bag and stuck his fingers in; when Mels attempted to swipe the bag back, he jerked the upwards and out of her reach and laughed.

 

“Thanks,” he said to her, and then left. Mels jumped up to follow him.

 

“He took my food!” Mels said.

 

“Don’t make it worse,” Rory pleaded.

 

“That’s stealing!”

 

“He always does stuff like that,” said Adrian. “You just have to ignore him. He’ll go away eventually.”

 

 _Eventually_ did not come very quickly. Actually, it took a couple of weeks before Chase decided he was done picking on Adrian, but thankfully, it _did_ end. Chase was the kind of kid who was only amused by a new thing for a relatively short amount of time before it began to bore him out of his skull and he needed to find something new to occupy his attention.

 

But in the few weeks that the mystery of Adrian’s name captivated Chase, he did he best to pester Adrian. And Mels a little bit too, though he seemed mostly uninterested in Rory for the most part. The kind of stuff he did could have been passed for just about harmless, which was a long shot from what he had done to some of the other kids in the past. There was no outright insults or physical violence such as punching—there were just little things, like stepping on the heel of Adrian’s shoe any chance he got, kicking at ankles (and missing, for the most part), or pinching and prodding  in order to get responses out of him. A few times, Chase pretended that he was going to spit on Adrian, but never actually did.

 

“You gotta tell your Aunt Sharon,” Rory begged Adrian one day on their way home from school. Chase had tagged along behind them for a few streets, talking at the backs of their heads and getting annoyed when the ignored him; he resorted to kicking the bottoms of their feet as they walked in order to get a reaction out of them, and when that only served to make Rory stomp on his toes, Chase left. Rory was rather proud of that toe-stomping, though.

 

“I’m not going to tell Aunt Sharon,” Adrian snorted. “It’s not that big of a deal—you know what he’s like.”

 

“But it is,” Rory said. “He’s technically bullying you.”

 

“Not that badly. I’m not going to be emotionally scarred or anything.”

“But…” said Rory.

 

“Besides. Aunt Sharon wouldn’t understand. She’d be all, _Amelia, you’re a big girl, you can stand up for yourself!_ ”

 

Rory pulled a face. Adrian did as well. If Mels had been there, she would have turned it into a face-pulling contest.

 

But a week later, when Chase’s attentions drifted elsewhere, it wasn’t only because he’d gotten bored. Well, yes, it was. But he’d only gotten bored of picking on Adrian because Mels had blackmailed him (but only slightly) with a bit of proof that he’d cheated on their last math test, but it’s not like he would have continued much longer without that, anyway. Or so Rory had hoped. (But it wasn’t like it was relevant anymore, since Rory’s life had returned to its previous Chase-free state.)

 

 

XXX

 

 

For the first little while, Mels was like a chewed up piece of gum—at first, when it’s stuck on the bottom of your shoe and won’t go away, you’re a bit annoyed. But then you become indifferent to it—it doesn’t affect your shoes one way or the other, so why bother caring too much, it’s too much energy—but eventually you can’t imagine life without that bit of gum on the bottom of your shoe. It’s just so familiar. And then, all of a sudden, you realize that you’ve grown to appreciate that gum being there.

 

At least, that’s how it was for Rory. He was rather proud of having come up with that analogy, though was sure it didn’t apply to Adrian as well, which was too bad, because Rory would have liked to share it with him. He was sure that Adrian would have appreciated it if it weren’t about Mels. Adrian had grown a bit protective of her. And anyway, it wasn’t a perfect analogy, seeing as you wouldn’t normally appreciate gum on the bottom of your shoe because it couldn’t do much for you. But Mels could. (She had blackmailed Chase rather affectively, after all.)

 

Actually, Adrian had liked Mels enough to let her in on playing Raggedy Doctor with him and Rory, and so now they were at the park, playing Raggedy Doctor. Actually, this wasn’t much of a park; it was just called a park. It was really just a big square of grass with a couple benches and a tiny, shallow pond that never had any ducks. The actual park was nearer to their houses, and this grassy area was in the middle of town. Today the three of them had been hanging out at Rory’s house, but his parents had decided to go shopping, and so the duckless duck pond park it was.

 

At the moment, Adrian was the Raggedy Doctor, of course, but he had chosen Mels as his assistant instead of Rory (for the first time! ever! a fact which Rory tried his hardest not to be mad about) which demoted Rory to the position of Evil Alien, which, okay, was pretty fun too, but not as much fun as being the Raggedy Doctor’s companion. This was mainly because Rory wasn’t very good at evil. Too nice for evil, Adrian declared him later, but Rory wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment to his character or an insult to his acting skills or if he should just regard it as a comment, which was the most likely way that Adrian had intended for it to be received.

 

“You’re doing the evil voice wrong,” Mels broke character to complain at him.

 

“Oh, sorry,” said Rory, a touch sarcastic. He dropped his stance—legs apart, knees bent, arms aloft, sneer fixed on his mouth—and asked her, still slightly sarcastic, “and how would you do the evil voice? And—and! How do you even know that evil aliens have the same sort of evil voice as humans? Their evil voices could very well be just the way I was doing it. You never know.”

 

“I do know, actually,” said Mels. “Their evil voices are like…they’re like…” she concentrated for a moment, thinking, and then said—in a low and wavering voice: “ _Youuuu shall not paaaass_ ….like that.”

 

`“That was pretty good,” said Adrian, “But actually, it’s more like, ‘ _Prisoner Zero has escaped’_ ,” and he did his best impression of the voice he’d been hearing nightly three years ago. “Except, it should be a bit more echoy. I can’t really make my voice echo all by itself.”

 

“What’s that mean?” asked Mels. “The ‘Prisoner Zero’ bit.”

 

“I’m not quite sure,” said Adrian. “But when the Doctor came to fix the crack in my wall, that’s what the giant eyeball on the other side had been saying the whole time. It probably means just what it says.” He shrugged. “Prisoner Zero has escaped.”

 

“Oh,” said Rory.

 

“You can get back to your evil alien thing,” said Mels to Rory after moment.

 

“And you won’t criticize me this time?” Rory had heard his mom using the word criticize to his dad a lot, recently, so he’d looked up its meaning in the dictionary in his classroom. He’d been using it a lot recently, too, now that he knew what it meant. It was a good word.

 

“No criticizing,” said Mels, nodding seriously. She also rolled her eyes at Adrian, who stifled a snicker, but Rory didn’t catch any of that. So he slid back into character.

 

“And if you don’t give me the…the…” he thought for a moment, and then spouted out, “Radium Crystal, I’ll kill your friend here!” he grabbed Mels’s wrist and held up his hand in a finger gun to her head. “It’s an alien gun. It’s got a….radioactive beam,” he said helpfully to Adrian. Mels twisted her wrist out of Rory’s grasp. He kept his finger gun pointed at her.

 

“You’re never getting your claws on that Radium Crystal, Glorb Five!” Adrian brandished his sonic screwdriver. “Vworrrrp— _vworr_ rrrp. Now your gun doesn’t work anymore, Rory.”

 

“Well, well I….” Rory stuck his hands in his pockets. He found a paperclip. “I have _this_!”

 

Mels snickered. “Your paperclip is useless, _Glorb Five_ ,” she said. “We have opposable thumbs.”

 

“You’re not playing it right,” Rory complained at her. “You’re supposed to get into it, or else it’s no fun.” And Mels held up her hands. _What_ , the hands seemed to say, _at least I’m trying_. But Rory didn’t think she was trying very hard.

 

And after that, the gum on the bottom of Rory’s shoe became a fact in his life. Not that he was complaining; Mels was very tough, and just a little bit feared and rude, and was rather good at fending off bullies. So in the end, it was all good.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“Why do you have to be in so much trouble all the time?” Adrian asked Mels. “You’re the most in trouble at the school, besides boys.”

 

“And you,” said Mels.

 

“I _am_ a boy,” Adrian told her.

 

“I know,” said Mels, crossing her arms over her chest. “I was just saying.”

 

“Well, you can _just say_ something else.” Adrian glared at her, arms crossed to mirror her. “Because I really am a boy.”

 

Mels just grinned and laughed a little. “Yeah,” she said. “I know that.”

 

“Then act like you know it!”

 

 

XXX

 

 

Mels seemed to be a little nervous when she went over to Adrian’s house for the first time, which Adrian picked up on a bit late. (‘ _A bit late’_ as in just before opening the front door.) He didn’t really understand why, though, after thinking about it for a moment. There was nothing scarier at his house than Aunt Sharon, who wasn’t even that scary. Aunt Sharon was just tired and annoyed all of the time, and wasn’t even home yet.

 

Adrian told this to Mels, whose shoulders did not budge from their tense, hunched forward position. But her smile did relax a bit. Perhaps Mels just didn’t like adults. She certainly hadn’t shown any evidence of liking them or the rules they attempted to impose.

 

“Want something to eat?” Adrian asked.

 

“Sure,” said Mels, and then went into the kitchen. Adrian picked himself an apple from the bowl of fruit on the counter.

 

“What would you like?”

 

Mels wrinkled her nose at the bowl of fruit and opened up the fridge to peer inside. “Do you only have red apples?”

 

“Yeah, I think so. Do you not like red apples?”

 

“Not really,” said Mels. “Green ones are better.”

 

“Well, we’ve got…” Adrian took a bite of his and stood beside Mels in front of the open fridge. He used his apple to point to his suggestion. “Yoghurt?”

 

“Sure.”

Adrian thought briefly of the Doctor and how it had taken forever to find a food he would be willing to eat. Mels was not so picky, thankfully, so Adrian took out a yoghurt cup and gave it to Mels and then searched around for a spoon in the silverware drawer.

 

They had their snacks and then went the stairs to Adrian’s bedroom. Mels stopped at the top of the stairs and looked around, staring particularly at the wall opposite the window and heater of the second floor, until Adrian poked his head from his room and said, “Mels?”

 

And her head snapped around, followed by her body. “Yeah?”

 

“What were you looking at?”

 

She glanced back at the empty wall, and then to Adrian again. “Nothing,” she said, suddenly taking the defensive. “Nothing at all. Why do you ask?”

 

“Just…. C’mon, let’s get our homework done, and then we can play Raggedy Doctor or something.”

 

Of course, things didn’t happen quite in that order. They got distracted from their work when Adrian pulled out of his box of Raggedy Doctor things and Mels asked if the Doctor was hot (which _of course_ he wasn’t. He was too funny looking to be _hot_.) But eventually they sat down on Adrian’s bed and pulled out their books, model time machine discarded on Adrian’s rumbled blanket, half hidden.

 

They were in the middle of working on their math section—which Adrian had to help Mels with. It seemed like every other problem, Mels said, “Adrian, what’s this?” and math wasn’t even Adrian’s best subject; he suspected Mels was only doing that to annoy him—when the front door downstairs opened.

 

“Hello,” called Aunt Sharon from the front parlor. “Amelia?”

 

Adrian rolled his eyes, but called back: “We’re upstairs!”

 

Not soon after that came the sound of footsteps on the staircase—or, more specifically, high heeled shoes on the carpeted staircase. Aunt Sharon poked her head into Adrian’s room, almost timid. Mels was reminded of a timid mouse.

 

“Hello Amelia,” she said, smiling warmly. She opened Adrian’s door wider and came all the way in. “How was your day?”

 

“It was fine. How was yours, Aunt Sharon?”

 

“Alright.” A sort of noncommittal answer. Her attention already seemed to be drifting from Adrian. This was proven when her eyes darted to Mels. “You must be Amelia’s new friend—Melody, right?”

 

“Yeah,” said Mels. “Pleased to meet you, miss. Thank you for having me over this afternoon.”

 

“Oh, it was no problem. And please—you can call me Aunt Sharon.”

 

“…alright,” said Mels, sounding a little uncertain.

 

“Well. I’ll be making supper in an hour. Would you like to call your parents and see if you can stay, Melody?”

 

“I…yeah,” mumbled Mels, looking at the work in her lap instead of at Adrian or at Aunt Sharon. “Thanks.”

 

“Hope you like chicken,” said Adrian once Aunt Sharon had gone. “That’s all she ever makes for supper.”

 

Mels shoved her things off of her lap and jumped up to shut Adrian’s bedroom door. “Why does she still call you that?”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” said Adrian. “She’s just stupid and stubborn.”

 

“ _All_ adults are stupid and stubborn,” said Mels. The expression on her face said that Adrian was the only person, ever, who had missed this crucial fact and Adrian found that, for the moment, he had to agree with her statement.

 

 

XXX

**Eleven**

 

 “Dad,” Rory said one evening when Brian came into his bedroom to say goodnight. Rory sat up, paused, and then asked awkwardly, “How do you tell when you like somebody? I mean, _like-_ like. How do you know when you fancy someone?”

 

Brian sat down on the edge of Rory’s bed, and reached out to his nightstand to turn his lamp back on. “That’s a hard question, you know.”

 

“Yeah. That’s why I’m asking.”

 

“Is there someone you think you might fancy?”

“Not really,” said Rory. “But a lot of my mates are talking about the girls that they fancy, lately.”

 

“Ah,” said Brian. “Even Adrian?”

 

“No, not Adrian,” said Rory. “My other mates. I do have mates besides Adrian, you know. Like Geoff.”

 

Brian laughed a little bit. “Yes, I know. Well. When you fancy someone…hmmm. When you fancy someone, you like to be around them a lot, and you want to be around them even when you’re not. You know their face really well, and their voice, and their opinion always matters to you, sometimes a lot more than it should.” Brian fell quiet then, to think. He continued softly, “You get a fluttery feeling in your stomach, sometimes, or this really nervous feeling in your chest, or your heart. Right here.” Brian put his fingertips to his heart for a moment. “…and…It makes you really happy when they’re happy, and when they’re sad, it makes you sad too, because you want to cheer them up.”

 

Rory thought on this. He mouth drew downwards into a frown as he tried to match what had been described to him to something he had felt before. Brian laughed a little, then shook his head.

 

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’m rubbish at this. Well, Rory. When you fancy somebody, you’ll just sort of know. And if you stop fancying them, you’ll sort of know then, too.”

 

“Are you sure?” asked Rory, wary. The only person who he had been able to come up with was Adrian, and that couldn’t be right.

 

“I’m sure. Now, it’s time you went to sleep. Good night, Rory. I love you.” He kissed Rory on the head. He would keep doing that until Rory was well past the age that most parents would have stopped.

 

“Love you too, dad,” said Rory. He didn’t manage to fall asleep for a long time that night.

 

 

XXX

 

 

**Twelve**

Summer time. Normally the best time of year, right? Well, not for Rory, not this summer, because his parents got divorced.

 

“They just…stopped fancying each other, I guess,” Rory had told Adrian sadly. “But I guess that happens, you know? So mum’s gunna move away.”

 

“….are you going with her?” Adrian asked. He sounded calm and nonchalant, but actually, the thought of Rory moving away was rather distressing.

 

“No,” Rory said. “I’m staying here with dad. I’ll go visit mum sometimes, though.”

 

“Okay,” said Adrian. He wasn’t sure what else to say, so they lay on their backs in silence and watched the shapes made by the clouds.

 

 

XXX

 

**Thirteen**

Adrian stared at the full length mirror which hung on the inside of his closet door. Mels was lounging on his bed, toying with the model TARDIS Adrian had made in art class when they had been sculpting.

 

“I hate this,” he said, picking up another t-shirt from where he had discarded it on the ground, and then comparing it with another. Choosing one, he pulled it over his head—it was the fourth shirt he had on. He turned sideways in the mirror and checked his reflection, made a face, and then another. He pressed his hands to his chest.

 

“You could have it worse,” said Mels. “They’re pretty small. At least they’re not like mine.”

 

“Yeah,” muttered Adrian, flopped down onto the foot of his bed.

 

“Have you ever tried binding?” Mels sat up.

 

“…binding?”

 

“Yeah.” Mels grabbed Adrian’s laptop from the floor and opened it up.

 

Adrian scooted up to the head of the bed to see what she was doing. He leaned back against the headboard while she googled some things, opening a few links in new tabs and then clicking over to images. She turned the computer so that Adrian could study the pictures.

 

“That’s….does that really work?” He put his finger on a ‘before and after’ set of pictures.

 

“Seems to,” shrugged Mels.  “I found this one blog…”

 

“So it’s not just all editing?”

 

“I mean, people talk about it like it works,” Mels said. She type in a url and handed the computer over to Adrian, who spent some time scrolling through—skimming articles, binder reviews and questions that had been submitted and answered, staring at more ‘before and after’ pictures.

 

“They look so happy,” he said. “All of them.” He frowned. And then smiled a bit. “Hey, there’s a tutorial here on how to make your own. Several tutorials. Like…cut up pantyhose…there’s a few that you have to sew, and here’s one that just says to wear a couple sports bras, one on top of the other.”

 

Mels grinned wider. “Let’s do this,” she said, sliding off of Adrian’s bed. “What do you have?”

 

“Well—I think Aunt Sharon’s got some old sewing stuff around. She used to make quilts and never finish them.” Adrian put the laptop aside. “And…well, I do have a couple sports bras.”

 

“Really?”

 

Adrian rolled his eyes. “Aunt Sharon bought them for me. She also bought me a couple actual bras, which I do wear sometimes.” It’s not like he liked wearing them, but it was sort of necessary.

 

“Let’s try the layered sports bras one first,” said Mels. “I’ll, I don’t know, wait in the hallway.”

 

“Alright.” And when Adrian let Mels back into his room, he asked, “…does it look any different?”

 

“Yeah,” Mels said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Lots, actually!”

 

Adrian grinned. Mels grinned back.

 

“Let’s see what we can do with that old sewing machine of your aunt’s,” said Mels, and that was pretty much that.

 

 

XXX

 

 

A few days later Mels presented Adrian with an actual binder, which was nearly perfect and likely very, very expensive.

 

“Where did you get this?” Adrian asked, suspicious.

 

“I borrowed some money and bought it for you,” said Mels. Her grin was like a shark’s: full of teeth.

 

“Borrowed,” repeated Adrian, a bit doubtful. But he supposed he couldn’t complain. The binder she had given him, after all, worked like a charm and fit like a glove. And they never did talk about why Mels had been researching binding in the first place, but Adrian thought that he was alright not knowing, just for these couple instances.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Leadworth may not have been the biggest or most equipped village, but it was a rather spread out one, with several odd outliers. The mall was one of these, and this is where Aunt Sharon was driving Adrian home from, after a rather unsuccessful daytrip to shop for clothing. Neither Adrian nor Aunt Sharon were very happy by this time, and when Aunt Sharon give a loud sigh, like she was trying to get his attention, Adrian knew it was only going to get worse.

 

“Amelia,” she said, “I’m worried about you.”

 

“Oh?” mumbled Adrian into the window, pressing his face to it. He almost wished it were intangible; then he could escape what was surely coming.

 

“Yes. I’m worried that you…don’t understand the facts of your gender.”

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Adrian asked, feeling appalled at what he was hearing. This was not a conversation he wanted to have, not now, not ever.

 

“Amelia, do you think you’re a boy?” Sharon asked, sounding serious. Adrian noted that her grip on the steering wheel was far tighter than necessary. He did not have a chance to answer his aunt because she steamrolled onwards. “Because you aren’t, Amelia. You’re a girl. And…I’m not saying that you have to be the girly-ist girly-girl ever, or to paint your bedroom walls pink—but I’m asking that you…I’m just suggesting here that you try to act normal.”

 

“Normal!” exclaimed Adrian. “ _Normal?_ ”

 

“Now, don’t be like that,” Sharon scowled at him briefly. “I know that you’re going through this tomboy phase of yours, but you’re going to have to grow out of it sooner or later, Amelia.”

 

Adrian felt trapped in the car. He eyed the door handle, wishing to throw the door open and jump out onto the concrete rushing past below, if that was the only way to get his aunt to stop talking.

 

“—and I want you to grow your hair back out,” Sharon was saying. “I know you gave yourself your horrible haircut when you were little, but that was, what—eight years ago? How old were you?”

 

Adrian turned his head to stare at her. He did not answer to correct her.

 

“But it’s time that you let it grow back. I won’t be taking you to the hair salon anymore.”

 

“I’ll cut it myself,” said Adrian.

 

“You won’t.”

 

“I will. It’s my hair and it’s on my head and I get to choose what I want to do with it.”

 

“Amelia, I know you’re a teenager now, but you really have to start understanding that—”

 

“And I can dress how I like!” Adrian continued, his voice rising now. He was very nearly yelling. “I won’t wear skirts and I won’t wear dresses no matter how many you buy for me or try to get my put on at that store. And I’m not going to wear makeup, either, because that’s ridiculous.”

 

“Amelia—”

 

“And stop calling me that!” Adrian yelled. “It’s _Adrian_. I’m Adrian!”

 

“Amelia!” said Sharon, aghast. “Don’t you dare raise your voice at me!”

 

“I’ll yell all I fucking want! You don’t have any right to control me!”

 

Sharon slammed on the brakes violently; they had arrived at a stop sign. Adrian threw open his door, tore off his seatbelt, and got out of the car.

 

“AMEL—”

 

Adrian slammed the door shut and stormed off to the sidewalk and down the road.

 

Rory’s dad answered the door when Adrian knocked. “Uh, hi, Mr. Williams. Is Rory there?”

 

“Sorry Adrian, he’s at Geoff’s house this afternoon.”

 

“Oh…okay.”

 

Something upset must have showed on Adrian’s face, because Brian stepped aside, opening the door wider. “Why don’t you come in? You look like you could use a good mug of hot chocolate. Instant hot chocolate, though. I’m rubbish at making actual stuff.”

 

“I…that’d be great. Thank you.”

 

Adrian pulled off his jacket and left it on the back of one of the living room chairs, and then followed Brian into the kitchen and sat down on a wooden kitchen chair. Brian made him hot chocolate; he put the chocolate powder into a mug, filled it with water, mixed it up, and then put it in the microwave. There was some small talk as the mug heated, about school and how it was getting so cold and how Rory’s mother had planted flowers in a small patch in the back garden, and now they were dying, despite Rory’s best efforts to keep them alive.

 

“It’s the cold, I think,” said Brian, sitting down across from Adrian, sliding the mug of hot chocolate across the table. Adrian picked it up and blew on it before sipping cautiously. “But Rory thinks it’s his lack of gardening skills.” Brian sighed. “It was hard on him, his mum’s leaving.”

 

Adrian nodded, not willing to say much. He was still smarting from Aunt Sharon’s words, even now.

 

 “Well. Do you plan on trying out for any winter sports this year? Rory says that you’re brilliant at football.”

 

Adrian laughed, grateful for something new to think about. “He only says that because I’m better at him and he’s horrible. I’m really not all that good, so I doubt I’d make the team.”

 

“You never know. You could.”

 

“I doubt it.”

 

“I tried out for the team when I was about your age. I was just as horrible at football as Rory is, but I still made the team. Everyone else was just as rubbish as I was.” He laughed, remembering. “We tied one game that whole season and lost the rest by a huge margin. But it was still brilliant.”

 

Adrian didn’t look at Brian. “I did look into it, when they announced try outs, but they’re two teams and they’re split into boys and girls.” He gave a miserable shrug and slid lower in his chair, keeping his mug near his chin. Steam rose from it and warmed his chin, lips, and nose, and his fingers were wrapped around the mug, warmed by it.

 

“What about any other sports? Rugby? Tennis?”

 

“Nah. Not really my thing, either of those.” Adrian smiled a little.

 

“Tennis is a ridiculous sport,” Brian declared, “as is golf.”

 

“I don’t—”

 

Brian’s phone buzzed on the table, sliding sideways. He tilted the screen upwards to read the caller ID. “Hold that thought,” he said to Adrian, “I should answer this. It’s your aunt.”

 

“Brilliant,” said Adrian, his good mood evaporating. He listened to Brian’s side of the conversation while staring into his half-empty mug.

 

Brian and Sharon’s conversation did not last very long, and nor did it sound very good for Adrian. Brian was silent after hanging up the phone, and Adrian kept his eyes in his mug while he waited to be scolded.

 

“Your aunt was frantic,” Brian told him eventually. “She had no idea where you’d gone. You really worried her, you know. She loves you.”

 

Adrian snorted. “Doesn’t seem like it, half the time,” he said, and was horrified to find upon speaking how close he was to tears.

 

“She does, though. She’s your aunt.”

 

“Being related doesn’t mean that they love you,” said Adrian. He sniffed, swallowed, and then filled his mouth with hot chocolate as an excuse to not say anything else.

 

“She’ll come around,” Brian said. “Eventually.”

 

But Adrian didn’t think that _eventually_ meant anytime soon and he didn’t want to wait for _eventually_.

  
When Adrian failed to respond or look up, Brian stood. “You just go home when you like, alright? Rory will be back in a few hours.”

 

And, for lack of anything else to do, Adrian nodded, and finished his hot chocolate.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“The winter dance is in a few weeks,” said Mels, fixing her scarf. A gust of wind picked up the loose end of her scarf and it hit Adrian in the face. He batted it away. Mels didn’t seem to notice, and she continued, “I think it’s ridiculous as hell that they’re going to make everyone dance while it’s _snowing_.”

 

“It’s not going to be snowing in the gym,” said Adrian absently. He’d gotten his first phone a few days ago, and had been glued to it since. Apparently, his storming off had prompted his aunt to decide it was high time that Adrian owned his own cell phone. However, Rory didn’t have one yet and neither did Mels, so neither knew who Adrian was texting all the time, since it was obviously neither or them.

 

Rory laughed at the idea of a large group of their classmates, bundled up in their winter jackets and scarfs and hats, standing around in the middle of a snow storm, music blaring. That would be ridiculous. “Are you gunna go, Mels?”

 

“No way,” said Mels. “Not a duck’s chance in hell!” She’d recently picked up on swearing, and it had opened up a whole new world for her.

 

“How about you, Adrian?” Rory asked.

 

“Hmm?” Adrian glanced up from his phone. “Oh, to the Winter Dance? Yeah. Probably.”

 

“Would you…would you like to go with me? I mean, so you’re not all alone.”

 

“Well, actually,” Adrian bit his bottom lip, grinning. “Emily asked me to go with her.”

 

“What, like a _date_?” said Mels. “Oh, wow. Yuck.” She pulled a face.

 

“Yeah, like a date.” said Adrian. “And actually, she’s very nice.”

 

“I…I’ve never seen you hang out with her,” said Rory. In fact, he couldn’t even put a face to this name of ‘ _Emily_ ’.

 

“We’ve been texting,” said Adrian.

 

Feeling disappointed—and a little bit upset, alright—Rory asked, “How come you didn’t say anything earlier?”

 

“Well, it didn’t really seem that important,” Adrian looked slightly confused. Probably having heard some petulance in Rory’s tone, he asked, “…why?”

 

Rory shrugged. For one, if Adrian had said something, it would have saved Rory some embarrassment from attempting to ask Adrian to the dance.  For another, it would have saved Rory some disappointment as well. “No reason,” he said eventually. “Just…you know, curious.”

 

 

XXX

 

 

Rory wasn’t sure why he had gone to the dance, in the end. He had figured it would be incredibly boring, and, for the most part, that was true. Maybe some small part of him assumed that Adrian wouldn’t be interested enough in his date to spend the entire evening with her and would instead choose to hang out with Rory.

 

Well, that wasn’t how it went.

 

The Winter Dance was at their school, in the gym. It had been decorated to feel wintery and Christmasy; the walls and ceiling had been done up with red and green streamers, and paper snowmen and snowflakes were hung up as well. There was a snacks table along one wall, and a few tables set up with chairs, and the music was loud, played from a couple of speakers against the wall from the snacks and through the gym’s speaker system. The music was chosen and played by an older teenager with a laptop. After about an hour, it had started to give Rory a headache which pounded in his temples, unpleasant and distracting. The music wasn’t the kind Rory listened to much of, anyway, so he didn’t feel comfortable dancing to it.

 

Adrian, on the other hand, was enjoying himself—dancing around (and looking silly while doing so, because he couldn’t dance all that well) and talking to Emily and to others, drinking pink lemonade, snacking on Christmas-themed cookies….all the things that Rory found hard to enjoy. He blamed it on the headache.

 

He didn’t have his own phone yet. He would be getting one or his fourteenth birthday, which was just around the corner—January. So that meant he would have to ask Adrian to borrow his, and _that_ , in turn, meant braving the crowd to get to him.

 

Rory studied the situation in front of him, and then looked around for Adrian. Adrian was dancing with Emily in the middle—well, jumping about—of the crowd. Rory supposed he could attempt to walk straight through the crowd of dancers to Adrian, but that didn’t seem like the best option. He could go around the edges, scoot a bit around the sides of the designated area of a dance floor, or he could wait until Adrian left the crowd, which could be in a couple seconds or a half an hour. So perhaps that wasn’t the best option.

 

Rory decided that he would just have to go through all of the dancers. The sooner he called his dad, the sooner he could go home and take some medicine for his headache and go to sleep.

 

After several long moments of squeezing past people and giving ‘ _sorry’_ sand ‘ _excuse me_ ’s which, for the most part, went unheard, Rory made it Adrian’s side. “Adrian!” he said, but Adrian didn’t seem to hear Rory. “Excuse me,” he said to the people dancing nearby, attempting to squeeze by them. “Sorry—excuse me—Adrian,”

 

Finally, Adrian heard him. He turned around. “Rory!” he said, grinning. Well, he shouted it. They had to talk pretty loudly to be heard over the music at all. “Hi! I didn’t know you were there.”

 

“Yeah, I was just—I was wondering if I could borrow your phone,” Rory said, feeling awkward because the girl that Adrian had been dancing with—most likely Emily—had stopped dancing when Adrian had. She was staring at Rory, and Rory wasn’t sure what to make of her expression.

 

“Oh, sure,” said Adrian. He pulled the slim black phone from his back pocket. “Just bring it back when you’re done!”

 

“I’m Emily,” said the girl who had been dancing with Adrian. “Are you Rory?”

“I—uh, yeah,” Rory stuttered out.

 

 “He talks about you a lot,” Emily laughed loudly. “Rory this—Rory that—last week, when I was hanging out with my mate Rory…”

 

This made Rory feel all warm. He felt a prickling under his skin in his cheeks. “Really?” he said. “Well, that’s. Brilliant, yeah. I’ll be back with this in a moment.” He held the phone up to Adrian and gave a half-aborted wave with it.

 

After finishing his phone call, Rory went back inside, prepared for a repeat of earlier. But Adrian—thank god—was at the drinks table now, still with Emily, so Rory walked over and handed the phone to Adrian silently.

 

“…what’s wrong?” Adrian asked, noticing Rory’s quietness. He glanced at the phone and clicked to the recent calls list. “Why’d you call your dad?”

 

“I have a headache,” Rory said, “So I’m going home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

“Alright. Hope your headache goes away.”

 

“Me too,” said Rory.

 

“Nice to meet you,” said Emily.

 

“You too,” Rory said. He wasn’t sure if he meant it completely or not. Probably not.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Rory was just drifting off to sleep that evening when there was a knock at the front door. Rory ignored it and rolled over in his bed. His headache was mostly gone, and normally the medicine would have made him sleepy, but tonight, Rory felt strangely restless.

 

His bedroom door cracked open. “Rory?”

 

“What?” Rory said into his pillow, and then it occurred to him that Adrian was in his room, so he rolled up and said up. “What?”

 

Rory saw, in the bright light from the hall, that Adrian had a backpack with him, and was wearing the same things he had been wearing to the dance: a pair of jeans that had previously been Rory’s, and a striped button down over a grey long sleeved tee. His hair was still gelled—but his bangs, spiked up, were falling down, and the left side of his head had been messed up and flattened. He turned on Rory’s bedroom light and Rory squinted in the sudden onslaught of light.

 

“Do you mind if I stay the night?”

 

“Uhhh, sure,” said Rory. “Why aren’t you at home?”

 

Adrian shrugged. “Aunt Sharon’s out at work all night, again, and I didn’t feel like spending the night at home alone. And besides, I have things to tell you.”

 

Dread pooled in Rory’s stomach. “What sorts of things?”

 

“You know, just…things. I’m going to put on my pajamas.”

 

“Alright.”

 

Adrian closed the door and began to dig around in his backpack. Rory settled back onto his pillow and threw an arm over his face so that he wouldn’t have to stare up into his ceiling light, and waited for Adrian to start talking when he was ready.

 

 Adrian changed silently, and turned off the bedroom’s light, disappeared into Rory’s small bathroom and brushed his teeth, and then crawled onto the side of Rory’s bed that Rory wasn’t occupying. Well, Rory was in the middle.

 

“Budge over,” said Adrian, pushing on Rory’s arm, and Rory did, heart pounding oddly in his chest. Suddenly, he was wide awake.

 

Adrian wiggled under the covers and took one of Rory’s pillows. Rory didn’t even consider protesting.

 

“So,” Adrian said.

 

Rory rolled over on his side to face Adrian, who was lying on his back. “So,” he replied.

 

“Things,” said Adrian, and was silent for a moment. Rory looked at him, on his side,  and then rolled onto his back once more, looking at the spots where there had once been glow in the dark stars, but now there were only faded outlines of where they had once been stuck. “Emily tried to kiss me,” Adrian said eventually.

 

 _Oh_ , thought Rory. “What did you do?” he asked.

 

“I was like, ew,” said Adrian. “I mean, I pushed her away and said ‘ _ew_ ’ and she looked really hurt.”

 

“Well, she should have asked first,” Rory said reasonably.

 

“Yeah,” said Adrian. “But the thing is, I don’t know if I ever want to kiss a girl. At all.” He sounded very calm and thoughtful. “What about you, Rory?”

 

Rory thought his heart was going to beat right out of his mouth. When he spoke, his voice sounded odd in his own ears. “What about me what?”

 

“Do you want to kiss a girl?”

 

“I don’t know,” said Rory. Awkwardly, he added, “Maybe, but maybe not. I think…I think it’d depend on who it was.”

 

“Yeah,” Adrian said. “That…that’s a good point. Maybe I just don’t fancy Emily.”

 

“She obviously fancied you,” said Rory.

 

“Have you ever fancied anyone?”

 

Rory did not like all of these sudden changes in conversation. Actually, he didn’t like any of the conversation. “I…think so.”

 

“Who?”

 

Rory thought for a moment, and settled with, “I’m not telling you.” Because he couldn’t very well tell his best mate that he thought he fancied him, sometimes.

 

Adrian whispered, “Is it _Mels_?”

 

“No! No way! No! There is no way in hell I would ever fancy _Mels_.”

 

This made Adrian laugh. “Joking,” he said. Rory laughed after a moment, too, at the absurd thought.

 

Figuring it was now or never, Rory asked, “Have you ever fancied anyone?”

 

“Well,” said Adrian. “I thought I fancied Emily, but I guess I didn’t, so I don’t think so, no.”

 

“Okay,” said Rory.

 

“I guess it’s not something we need to worry about right now,” said Adrian, and rolled onto his side, his back to Rory. “I mean, that’s a problem for when we’re older.” He yawned. After a long stretch of silence, he mumbled, “G’night, Rory.”

 

“Night,” Rory said and turned over so that his back was to Adrian’s, and stared at the blinds over his window, which were pulled shut, and did his very best not to think about anything much.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“Dad?” Rory asked nervously over a dinner of cheese and turkey sandwiches one evening.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I…I have a question. Well, it’s mostly a question but it’s also sort of a situation, but a bit of a…problem,” Rory stumbled over his words. Brian’s brow creased in worry.

 

“This isn’t about being bullied, is it?” he asked, serious.

 

“No, it’s just….do you…Well. It’s about fancying people.”

“Okay,” said Brian. He took a bite of his sandwich. Rory continued to poke at his for a moment longer.

 

“Well…have you ever…did you…because I think I fancy someone,” said Rory. And then, rushed, “But it’s a bloke.”

 

Brian looked at Rory for a moment, chewing his sandwich. “Alright. That’s fine, you know. I’ll support you if you fancy blokes. Don’t know about your mum though, but there you have it.”

 

Rory smiled, his nerves fading but not gone completely. His smile faltered.

 

“I’ll want to meet this bloke sometime,” said Brian.

 

“You already have,” Rory told his plate, and even though Rory didn’t see it, a grin crossed Brian’s face as he realized just then who exactly it was that Rory fancied. Wisely, Brian chose to say nothing about that.

 

 

XXX

 

**Fourteen**

 

Adrian set his plastic water bottle and lunch bag down on the table beside Mels. Well, he dropped them there, and the water bottle fell over. Mels grabbed it before it could roll of the table and set it upright.

 

“Oh, stop being so dramatic,” Mels said. “It’s one measly English test. You’ve still got a good grade even if you’ve failed it.”

 

As he sat down, Adrian took Mels’s apple and bit into it before she could complain.  Mels stuck her tongue out at him; she was not above such petty actions. Neither was Adrian, unfortunately, and he returned the childish gesture.

 

“Why didn’t you study?”

 

“You’ve never studied, once in your whole life,” scoffed Adrian.

 

“Lies,” Mels declared. “Lies and slander.”

 

“Name one time you’ve studied anything at all!” Adrian challenged her. A tiny piece of apple flew from his mouth and landed on the table. He flicked it away.

 

“I reviewed for that maths chapter three test,” Mels said boastfully.

 

“I said _studied_ , not _reviewed_ ,”

 

“Oh, it’s the same thing!”

 

“It’s not!”

 

Adrian and Mels continued to squabble, since Rory—ever the peacekeeper of their group—was not there to tell them to knock it off and then change the subject in an awkwardly obvious way. Adrian felt his absence acutely, then. Mels noticed as well after a moment, and she let their argument fall silent.

 

“No, really though,” she said. “Where has Rory been this last week? Is he sick? I know I saw him this morning, though.”

 

“No,” Adrian replied, doing his best not to sound as though he was envious or sulking. “He’s been having lunch with Geoff and them.”

 

“Well,” Mels said, grin evil. (Adrian couldn’t help but grin back. It was involuntary, really, it was.) “Let’s go and find him and ask him why.”

 

They found Rory with Geoff and a motely group of a few others, sitting on the ground beneath the shade of the overhang on the side of the science building. It had taken more searching than had been necessary, since they had basically walked in a circle around the majority of the school’s campus before they found him, only around a corner or two from where they normally sat behind the school’s main building.

 

Rory waved as they approached.

 

“Hey, Rory,” said Mels, “Will you come walk with us? Lunch’s almost over, anyway.”

 

“I…” Rory hesitated for a moment, glancing at Geoff, and then said, “Well, sure.”

 

He stood up and gathered his trash. Adrian, half a step behind Mels, rolled back onto his heels while they waited for him.

 

“Hey, Rory,” called one of Geoff’s friends, who Adrian didn’t know. “You’ll text me that link tonight, yeah? Don’t forget.”

 

“Yeah, no, course not,” stammered Rory. “I—I mean, I won’t forget.” He corrected himself quickly. Adrian got the feeling that Rory didn’t want to talk about the link or whatever, perhaps not in front of himself and Mels—maybe because he didn’t want them to know about it. “I’ll see you guys later.”

 

Mels led the way back to their usual lunch table. Adrian and Rory followed behind, pausing so Rory could toss his trash into the bin as they went passed it.

 

Adrian waited until they were out of earshot of Geoff’s group, or at least at a suitable distance from them, before bursting. “Why didn’t you say anything about not having lunch with us anymore?”

 

Rory looked embarrassed for a moment, cheeks going pink and eyes darting to the ground. But when he looked back at Adrian, his face only showed confusion, his forehead and the corners of his mouth creased.

 

“That’s not…” he started. Mels turned around to listen as well, and he glanced at her. “I thought that I _did_ tell you, though?”

 

“I don’t remember you saying anything,” Adrian said.

 

“Well I—I didn’t? I was so sure I had. I’m sorry. It was just, I was talking to Geoff last week before lunch and he was telling a really interesting story so I was just gunna go sit with him that day to listen to it—I told you, right? But I _did_ —and then he invited me back to sit with them again. He was just being friendly.”

 

Adrian and Mels shared a glance. It was unspoken, but they both agreed that Rory’s excuse was pretty lame. Rory must have seen this because he sighed, and said, now sounding more than just slightly annoyed, “Look, it’s possible for me to have more friends than just you two!”

 

Adrian immediately felt embarrassed. “That’s true,” he said. “But it doesn’t excuse the fact that you can’t just run off on us like that! It was rude.”

 

“Sorry,” Rory said again, not sounding extremely sorry, but his voice softened as his continued. “But I think I’ll keep having lunch with them, okay? And it’s not like that means I don’t like you guys anymore. I just…want to try to make friends with Geoff.”

 

Mels seemed to have accepted this as a fairly decent run down of the events that had occurred from Rory’s perspective, and gave a one-shouldered careless shrug. “Alright,” she said.

 

The bell rang, and Mels left for class after a brief goodbye to both Adrian and Rory. Rory was turning to go as well, but Adrian stopped him with one hand on his arm.

 

“Yeah?”

 

Adrian looked at Rory for a moment, then shook his head and dropped his hand. “Nothing,” he said. “You’re a terrible liar, that’s all.” He left, then, before Rory could attempt to defend himself.

 

 

XXX

 

For the past couple days, Adrian had walked home by himself, rather than with Rory for company, the way it had been for nearly half his life until this point. Mels rarely joined them for waks home, usually spending her time immediately after school in detention or—involuntarily—in tutoring. Besides, she lived out of the way from Rory and Adrian’s street, at the Leadworth Children’s home; she had to walk him in nearly the opposite direction, so when she did walk afterschool with them, it was always as a rather long detour.

 

Rory, on the other hand, was simply unaccounted for, and had been for the entire week. He’d come to eat lunch with them last week and he and Mels had more or less found him out, but then, on Friday, he had gone back to eating with Geoff, and on Tuesday had declined to walk home with Adrian for the first time in— _literally_ —years. Besides sick days and weekends, of course. But it still stung Adrian rather sharply.

 

He got home and attempted to do his homework but instead only wound up procrastinating on it for the entire afternoon. Once it was suitably dark out, he called Mels.

 

“Hulloo,” she said.

 

“Mels, do you think Rory is avoiding me?”

 

Mels snorted. “Of course not,” she said. “You’re overthinking things.”

 

“I’m _not_. He like, runs away from me.”

 

“He does not. He’s just making new friends, branching out, you know? Look, it’s supper time and I am _starving_ , so I’m going to go.”

 

“It’s not supper,” snorted Adrian. “That would have been ages ago. You’re just trying to get me off the phone.”

 

“Fine, yes, you’ve found me out. I really just want to go snog Tristan behind the dining hall.”

 

“Mels!” Adrian exclaimed.

 

Laughing, Mels said, “Ki _dding_. God, you are so gullible. Rory is not avoiding you, so go to sleep. I’ll see you later.” She hung up, and Adrian tossed his cell over the side of the bed and onto the rug.

 

 

XXX

 

“I really should go—” said Rory for the fifth time in the course of the afternoon.  The only difference was that this time, Adrian had had enough, and seized the nearest item—a decorative couch pillow—and threw it at Rory’s face.

 

“What is _up_ with you lately, Rory?” Adrian asked, exasperated. “What, do you not want to be mates any more or something?”

 

“W—wait, what?” Rory spluttered for a moment. He flailed about with the pillow for a moment, before shoving it onto the floor. “What are you talking about?”

 

Adrian looked at Rory with narrow eyes. “It’s totally okay if you want to have other friends, you know, but I had kind of hoped you’d be the sorta guy to just tell me when you don’t want to be mates anymore.”

 

“Wait, no, hold on,” said Rory. “Nobody said anything about not wanting to be mates any more. I definitely still want to be your friend. Why do you think I _don’t_?”

 

Adrian looked at Rory as though he were being intentionally thick. “Oh, I don’t know, just maybe the fact that you’ve been _avoiding_ me.”

 

Rory shifted nervously. “I…it’s just, stuff has been happening, you know? I’m really sorry. I’m not avoiding you.”

 

Okay, maybe Rory had been, but only a little bit.  Only sort of. Suddenly, previously hidden aspects of the world had come into view: romance, sex, et cetera.  And where those things were involved, Rory’s mind always flew to Adrian, despite himself. And, well…it was sort of hard to be around him and desperately want to kiss him. Besides, Rory’s insides kept turning to mush when Adrian touched him, even slightly or in the most casual way. It’s just that Rory was suddenly hyper-aware of everything that Adrian did. And…well. It wasn’t the best situation to be in. He had begun to fancy Adrian _desperately_ , and he no clue what to do with that fact.

 

“Sure,” said Adrian. He rolled his eyes and slumped; he was sitting on the floor, back to the couch and legs out, under the coffee table. Rory, who had been sitting on the other end of the couch, slid down to sit on the floor as well.

 

“Really,” Rory said. “I mean it, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think—”

 

“Which would be the problem, right?” Adrian didn’t look at Rory. “You not thinking,”

 

“Yes,” said Rory. “That is exactly the problem. I don’t think about the consequences of my actions.”

 

Adrian scoffed. Rory stared at his feet, imagining how horrible life would be without an Adrian-shaped space. Not that the Adrian-shaped space would ever disappear—if Adrian was gone, that space would only turn into a horrible, hurting, Adrian-shaped _hole._ “I’m sorry—” he tried again after a moment.

 

“Oh, stuff it,” said Adrian, still not looking at Rory, and now sounding a little—well, not annoyed, but possibly still a little bit angry. “I’ll forgive you tomorrow or something. But not this second. You don’t have to apologize a million times.”

 

And Rory cracked a little grin. “Alright,” he said. He was sure that he’d stop fancying Adrian soon;  that section of his brain would surely get caught up on just how stupid it was to do that, and why, and that it needed to stop.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Two weeks later, Adrian had a girlfriend and Rory had come to the conclusion that his overactive imagination was not just overactive, but that he really did fancy his best mate.

 

It had surprised Rory to learn that Adrian had a girlfriend. It had been announced without warning, and Rory had been reminded of the Winter Dance the previous year. But, reflecting on it, Rory thought that he shouldn’t have been surprised; after all, everyone liked Adrian. There were a ton of reasons why everyone liked Adrian. Contributing factors were his laugh, his smile, the way he talked to everyone like they were important and their thoughts were important, and that he was intelligent and good at solving problems—or maybe that was just Rory.

 

Rory found himself complaining to Mels with pretty much no filter on his words one night after the fact when she was hanging out at his house late at night to keep him company while his dad went into town to finalize the divorce papers with is mum. Rory was tired and all of his inhibitions about telling someone—anyone—these things, directly, were gone.

 

“…’nd…’nd it’s not like I’m in love with him or anything,” Rory mumbled onwards, into his pillow. He was stomach-down on the floor of his bedroom and clutching his pillow to his face while Mels sat at his desk, browsing the internet on his crummy old laptop, which really needed to be replaced, and soon, too. “I just fancy him a bit, and that’s a lot different, but now he’s dating a girl, and that’s really weird. Remember that dance last year, and Adrian went with that one girl who tried to kiss him but he didn’t want to kiss her?” Rory sighed. “Well, yeah. But anyway, it’s pointless for me to be jealous because it’s never going to happen, him and me, you know? Because we’ve known each other for too long and if he knows I fancy him but he doesn’t fancy me back, which he doesn’t, I’m sure, then it’d be really awkward, and that’d suck.”

 

“But if he fancied you back?” Mels asked. Rory pulled the pillow off his face to look at her and saw she had abandoned his computer to sit on the ground, looking at him with an intense expression on her face, which seemed a bit out of place for the situation and conversation.

 

“Well, that’d be brilliant,” said Rory. “But he’s dating what’s her name now, so he probably doesn’t even…you know. Swing that way. Or whatever.” Rory then realized he had never told Mels that he was pretty sure he was gay. Suddenly, he felt awkward. “Right, yeah, I didn’t tell you, but I’m pretty sure I’m ga—”

 

“I know,” said Mels. She had a grin on her face, and her eyebrows were quirked. She looked very much like she had a secret, at that moment.

 

“…you do?”

 

Mels shrugged. “I figured, what with you going on about fancying Adrian tonight. No, but you can never be sure without actual proof—that Adrian won’t like you back, I mean. You can be plenty sure about….other stuff.” She waved her hand around in the air to vaguely illustrate her words.  “Whenever you feel sure about that other stuff.”

 

Rory laughed. “Yeah, no. Me and him is never going to work Mels.”

 

“It _might_ ,” said Mels, but it sounded more like she wanted to say ‘it _will_ ’.

 

“Oh, please don’t do anything stupid,” said Rory. “Like telling Adrian. Please, _please_ don’t tell Adrian.”

 

“I won’t,” said Mels. She grinned a little wider, and Rory wondered just what, exactly, he had set in motion, and could only hope it wasn’t going to turn out _too_ badly.

 

 

XXX

 

 

 

“…which is why I said no!” laughed Rebecca. She and Adrian were sitting at the park, with their feet in the sun but the rest of their bodies in the shade of a particularly large and leafy tree. Adrian laughed along with her.

 

“I would have told her to go away,” said Adrian. “Well. Go the _fuck_ away, to be more precise.”

 

“Wish I’d thought of that,” said Rebecca. “…you know, Adrian, you’re a good boyfriend.”

“Thanks?” he said. “I don’t really have much experience in the area.”

 

“Neither do I.”

 

She scooted closer to him, smiling nervously. Adrian felt nervous as well. “What….?”

 

“I’d like to kiss you,” she said, shyly. Adrian pulled his knees up.

 

“Uhh…” he said. “Well, alright. I’m warning you though; I’ve got no idea what I’m doing.”

 

“Neither do I,” she repeated, giggling. Their noses bumped before their lips touched. At first it was just a gentle touching. Adrian held himself very still, going cross eyed trying to look at Rebecca, who was entirely too close. It was rather awkward; he was fighting the instinct to pull his head away.

 

She began to move her mouth a bit, so Adrian copied her, and after a moment they found a sort of rhythm. Perhaps it was just starting to get good, but Adrian felt well and thoroughly weirded out, so he pulled away.

 

“Sorry, that’s really weird,” he said, wiping his mouth on the back of the hand. Very weird. He hadn’t really enjoyed it—he’d been too busy thinking about it, if that made any sense at all.

 

“Yeah,” Rebecca agreed. “But I’ve never kissed anyone before, so I don’t know if that’s how it’s supposed to be or not.” She seemed embarrassed, though, and wasn’t looking at him.

 

“Neither do I,” said Adrian, wishing he could escape without appearing to run away. “Wonder why people like it so much.”

 

“Me too,” said Rebecca, and then they fell into an awkward silence.

 

After Rebecca left, Adrian swiped his tongue around in his mouth, and then spit on the grass. His lips still felt all tingly—he could still feel the kiss—but it wasn’t pleasant. It made an odd churning in his stomach, a sort of voice in the back of his head, going _“Wrong, wrong, wrong, unpleasant and very not right,”_ softly.

 

But Adrian was nothing close to what could be considered a _quitter_. He and Rebecca maintained a relationship throughout the week, and gave snogging a few more goes. Rebecca seemed to get more enthusiastic each time, but Adrian was left feeling the same each time: odd, uncomfortable, and not wanting a repeat at all.

 

So, he supposed, that was that. He wouldn’t be dating any more girls in the future. It wasn’t like it had never crossed Adrian’s mind before, thoughts of his own sexuality. It’s just that it had never seemed very important before; only, now it was really important. So he called Rebecca and said he was sorry but it wasn’t going to work out between them, and then hung up while she was asking why, unable to conjure up a good reason other than _“I’m ninety-nine percent sure I’m not attracted to females, at all”_ and that probably wasn’t the best break up line in the world.

 

 

XXX

 

Adrian’s dating had not gone unnoticed by his aunt. In fact, it had resulted in several long and rather uncomfortable discussions about the topic, covering a wide variety of sub-categories, which included but was not limited to: sex, safety while on a date, proper etiquette for being someone’s _girlfriend_ , as Sharon had said, and—the big one—sexuality.

 

It was during their second discussion of this that Adrian realized a couple things. Aunt Sharon was blathering on about experimenting and getting to know yourself, but wasn’t sounding all that accepting to the idea of Adrian deciding, in the end, to date girls. She was still laboring under the erroneous impression that Adrian was still going through a phase and was a female on the inside, as well as on the physical aspect of things.

 

The double-whammy realization that hit Adrian was this:

 

Aunt Sharon would make his life harder if he presented himself as straight in his own eyes—a lesbian in Sharon’s. In his own eyes, he was not straight. But, identifying as gay would appear to Aunt Sharon as identifying as straight and perhaps that wouldn’t be the end of the world—at least not immediately.

 

He sighed, not sure how to feel about this conclusion.

 

“—many do attempt to find themselves during their teenage years,” Aunt Sharon continued. She was sitting on Adrian’s bed; he was at his desk, and had been keeping his back to her in order to ignore her as best as he could, but now swiveled his desk chair around to face her. Her stream of words stopped when  Adrian caught her eyes.

 

“You can stop now,” Adrian practically bit out, “I’m not a _lesbian_. And I’ll have you know that I broke up with Rebecca so you don’t have anything to blather on about.” He waved a hand in the air. Well, it was more like a viscous swatting at an extremely annoying gnat. “So will you please let me get my homework down now?”

 

Aunt Sharon looked smug as she stood. Adrian felt horrible, seeing that expression; in a sense, she had won. It almost made Adrian want to go find a new girlfriend, just so he could rub it in her face that he was not who she wanted him to be, was _pushing_ him to be.

 

“I’m glad that you’ve come around,” she said, her voice almost gentle, her eyes almost soft. Adrian didn’t say anything; he pressed his lips together and stared at her, hard, until she gave one last wavering smile and left. Only once she was gone did Adrian admit to himself that he felt like crying, just a little bit. But it’s not like he did.

 

 

XXX

 

 

**Fifteen**

It was a party. Mels was behind it, but it wasn’t at Mels’s house; she couldn’t exactly throw a party at the children’s home that she only a few years from being kicked out of, seeing as she no longer necessarily qualified as a child. So the party was at some poor kid named Ryan’s, because his parents were out of town for the weekend and it was the end of summer, so why not throw a big unsupervised party.

 

It was the first of this sort that Rory had been to—and the first that Adrian had been to—and Rory was sure that Mels had been to many, many more than either of them, which was to say she had partied at least once as opposed to Rory and Adrian’s shared record of absolutely none.

 

The party was, at this point, pretty much in full swing. A stranger crashed into Rory, sending him into a wall, which he hit with an _oof_ , before sliding to the floor and deciding it might be safer to stay there. Just as this plan was forming, however, Mels appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and offered him a hand and a wicked grin. Rory took the offered hand and Mels helped him stand up. Rory had grown like a bamboo shoot during that summer and was suddenly no longer the runt of the group. Standing beside Mels, now, was a sudden reminder of the fact that he was taller than both her and Adrian now.

 

Mels shouted something at him which Rory was unable to understand.

 

“What?” he yelled back.

 

She replied something in a normal volume and then left. A stranger caught his eye from across the hall and Rory felt the need to explain himself with a helpless sort of shrug, and then went off to locate Adrian.

 

Rory couldn’t say, but he thought that suddenly he was attractive as well, seeing as strangers were talking to him at this party more than they seemed to be talking to Adrian. Well, maybe that was because Rory had taken up a few self-defense lessons and started working out on a semi-daily basis, and so was no longer all skin and bones but instead had some substance and definition—not much, but hey, it was a start. But it wasn’t like Rory could accurately judge his own attractiveness; he was a little biased, after all.

 

At any rate: the party. It was quickly becoming one of those parties that everyone seemed to somehow know about and turned up at some point during the evening for some amount of time. It had started off with the four of them—Mels, and Ryan, who had a hopelessly huge crush on Mels, and Rory and Adrian. But soon other had started pouring in, and they brought with them alcohol and other unmentionable things that there was no way in hell Rory was going to touch, ever, any time soon, at all.

 

Throughout the evening, Rory had been overwhelmed enough by all the attention he was getting (from both genders)—presumably for his newfound height and muscle definition—and unfortunately, it seemed that Rory was unable to tell the difference between over friendly and flirting. He only got the difference when a girl slapped him across the face when he said no, no thanks, he didn’t want to go any place, he was just fine where he was, and up until then the conversation had been going great. They’d both been laughing a lot.

 

“Ow,” said Rory after she left, mainly to himself. “That was uncalled for.”

 

Adrian scoffed, returning from the other room in time to see the slap. He had a red cup in one hand. Rory raised an eyebrow at it and Adrian rolled his eyes. “Relax, this is just juice. Try it.” He offered it to Rroy.

 

Rory took a tentative sip. It was, indeed, only apple juice.

 

“Like I would ever drink beer again,” said Adrian, pulling a face. Rory hadn’t been aware that Adrian had ever tried beer before in the first place. “Anyway. Do you know why she slapped you?”

 

“…no,” said Rory.

 

“Well, I’ll tell you why. She was flirting with you, and she thought you two were going to go someplace and get it on, but then you rejected her.”

 

“What? Since when? We were just talking.”

 

“God,” laughed Adrian. “Are you being thick on purpose?”

 

“I really didn’t realize she was flirting.” said Rory. “Maybe I should go apologize.”

 

“Oh, don’t waste your breath.” Adrian slung an arm around Rory’s shoulders and sipped his apple juice. “Besides. You’ll probably never see her again. She looked pretty posh. I think she was from that posh kid school that’s like, an hour away.”

 

“Good point.”

 

“Ayyy! Roooor-ay! And Adrian, my man!” Geoff crashed into the wall beside Adrian, laughing. Several others—likely the ones who had just pushed him—were laughed nearby. “My mate! Adrian!”

 

“Hi, Geoff,” Adrian pulled his arm back from around Rory and held out the hand to help up Geoff, who took it and used it as leverage to haul himself up, much like the way Mels had helped Rory up earlier, the only difference being that Rory had not been drunk. “Enjoying yourself?”

 

“You bet!” he took Adrian’s cup right out of his hand and took a swig, and laughed. “Hey! This isn’t beer.”

“Nope, it’s even better than beer. It’s apple juice. Have the rest—I think you’ve had enough beer for tonight.”

 

“Naw, never can have too much beer.” Geoff said. “Ay, come on and play some drinking games with us.”

 

“I’m alright,” said Adrian. “I don’t drink. Designated driver.” Which was a lie, since he and Rory lived a fifteen minute walk from Ryan’s house, and he didn’t have a car. Neither did Rory.

 

“Come cheer us on, then! Can’t argue to with that.”

 

“Suppose not,” said Adrian. He clapped Rory on the arm and left with Geoff and Geoff’s laughing mates.

 

Rory stood there and wondered for a moment what to do next. He recognized the majority of the people at the party—after all, most attended school with him—but he only knew a few and their names; quite a few were only familiar for their face, and the rest were total strangers. Posh school, Rory reminded himself, and posh school kids. Eventually he went to the kitchen to find something to snack on.

 

The kitchen was empty except for a couple making out by the door and two people chatting, sitting on the counter. The island was covered with crumbs and bits of uneaten foods. It had likely been abandoned for having run out of food. Rory searched and found an apple, sitting alone in a bowl which had and one point probably been full of fruit. He washed the apple in the sink—never knew who might’ve had their hands on it—before biting into it.

 

“Hey,” said one of the two sitting on the counter. “Don’t we have a class together?”

 

It took Rory a moment to realize that the bloke was talking to him. “Me?” he said through his mouthful of apple. Swallowing it quickly—perhaps too soon, as it was still a bit sharp and hurt a little going down—he said, “I, I don’t know.”

 

Rory took in his appearance for a moment. He was well built, and he had black hair that was shaved on either side of his head but let to grow long in a stripe in the middle. It would have looked rather like a mohawk if it had been gelled up, but it wasn’t; it was flopping into his forehead and over to one side on the top of his head. He face was rather nice as well, in a slightly round way, but was nothing special. He had a glittering piercing above one eyebrow. Rory thought that he would have taken note of him before.

 

“I’m pretty sure you sit in the seat ahead of me in math,” he said.

 

“Ah, well,” Rory said awkwardly. “Cheers, then? I’m Rory.”

 

“I’m Dalton.” He held out his hand, and Rory took it to shake. “Oh, and this is my mate, Shell.”

 

“Hullo,” said Rory.

 

“It’s actually Shelly,” she said. “Only Dalton calls me Shell.”

 

“Enjoying the party?” Dalton asked.

 

“Yeah, sure, it’s…well enough.” Rory nibbled at his apple a little bit. “I feel a bit out of place, though.”

 

Shelly shrugged. “One of those things you gotta learn how to navigate, parties like these. Not that there are many round here in Leadworth, mind you,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this one’s broken up by the coppers by twelve. That’s the way most of ‘em go. Neighbors call us in, coppers kick us out.” She scoffed. “We live with a right bunch of old harpies. I can’t wait to move away for university.”

 

“Seconded,” said Dalton. “I want to live in London.”

 

“I’d love to go to America,” said Rory. “Just. One day. Not necessarily for university, though.”

 

“Nah, America’s the last place I’d want to be,” said Dalton. “I want to go someplace with character. London—London has character. London has history.”

 

“I don’t really see myself as the traveling type, though.” Rory pushed away some of the food on the island to make room for a place to sit, and hoisted himself up. “I’ve lived here in Leadworth and I’ve never been anywhere else. Well, except to visit my mom out in the country.” He shrugged. “But that’s not all that far from here.”

 

“My family once went on vacation to Ireland,” said Shell. “It was _fantastic_. And Dalton and I, we used to go to school at Graweden—the _Posh School_ , you know—but we both transferred down here to Leadworth at the end of last quarter. That’s the farthest I’ve ever—” On the counter beside her thigh, her phone buzzed, nearly buzzing itself right off the counter and onto the floor. “Damn.” she said, “It’s my mum. I’d better go outside and take that.” And she left to answer it outside where it was quieter.

 

Without Shelly there providing a sort of buffer, Rory suddenly felt awkward. Dalton was looking him up and down, as though appraising him. The conversation wasn’t off for long, though, because—just as a small group spilled noisily into the kitchen—he asked Rory, “So, which was do you swing?”

 

Rory’s eyebrows creased. “I—what do you mean?”

 

Dalton’s eyebrows were up, and he had a mischievous grin on his face. “For instance, do you swing _my_ way?”

 

“Are...are you asking me if I’m gay?” Rory asked, feeling flustered and sure he had misunderstood.

 

“Well, there’s not really a gentle way to ask that, especially when you’re aiming for a bit of a snogging session. I hate being let down or rejected, you know how it goes.”

 

“Not really, actually,” said Rory. His face very well could have been on fire. “Not at all, I mean.”

 

Something lit up in Dalton’s face, and Rory wondered if that was the right thing to have said, or exactly the wrong thing to have said.

 

“Well,” said Dalton. “Up for a little snogging?”

 

“I…” and then, with a rush of different thoughts and emotions at once—nerves, excitement, Adrian, getting over fancying Adrian, he said, “I think I’ve got a bit of apple stuck in my teeth.”

 

“That’s not a problem,” said Dalton. “I once snogged a bloke who had been eating onion soup just before.”

 

“Yuck,” said Rory, because despite having never snogged anyone before, that didn’t sound pleasant.

 

Dalton hopped off of the counter and took the one and a half steps it took to close the distance between them—or rather, between the counter and the island that Rory was sitting on. Standing up, Dalton was rather tall, and if Rory had been standing, Dalton would have towered over him. As it was, he put himself with one leg between Rory’s and both hands on the counter on either side of Rory’s thighs.

 

Rory put his apple down on the island behind him. He gulped.

 

“Don’t be nervous,” said Dalton. His face was incredibly close to Rory’s. “Snogging is no big deal, really.”

 

Not sure what else to do, Rory tilted his chin downwards slightly, and then—before he had a chance to think anything other than _hah, Adrian_ —they were snogging, and it wasn’t half bad. Actually, it was really rather nice. His hands, which Rory had been leaning back on, came forward as Rory leaned into Dalton, and placed themselves nervously on Dalton’s sides. Dalton had one hand now in Rory’s hair, and the other on the counter.

 

He wasn’t aware of how long it went on. He wasn’t aware of who was coming and going in and out of the kitchen until he heard Adrian’s voice.

 

“…Rory?”

 

Rory jerked backwards. There was a sound like wet pop as his mouth separated from Dalton’s, which sounded incredibly loud to Rory’s ears.

 

“…hi,” he said lamely, looking at Adrian’s right shoulder rather than his face.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

Rory shifted his eyes to Adrian’s face and stared. He couldn’t tell what was going on in Adrian’s head—he couldn’t tell if Adrian was mad or what. He sounded a bit angry, but his face was carefully blank, aside from the clenched jaw. Rory noticed, belatedly, Adrian was holding his red cup by the rim with his fingertips. Supposedly, it was now empty, and supposedly the only reason Adrian had come into the kitchen.

 

“Um, well…” Rory said. His entire body felt as though it had electricity running through it.

 

“This your boyfriend, Rory?” Dalton asked in his ear, sounding dangerous.

 

“No! No, this, um, this is Adrian, my best mate. Ah…Adrian, this Is Dalton.” He gestured lamely with his hands, which had still been resting tentatively on Dalton’s sides until that point. He dropped them to grip the counter now, instead. Dalton straightened up but didn’t move any further back than that.

 

“Were you ever planning on telling me that you’re…interested in blokes?” Adrian asked, sounding slightly upset. His face didn’t betray much, though, beside a slight frown and tilt and squint in his eyes which—okay, actually betrayed a lot, but Rory didn’t have any clue how to read it.

 

“Eventually,” said Rory. “Is…is that what you’re upset about?”

 

Adrian shook his head. “I’m heading home. Don’t do anything stupid.”

 

“Yeah—I…bye,” said Rory. Adrian didn’t say anything else before leaving.

 

“Well,” said Dalton when Adrian was gone. “That was a mood killer.”

 

“Tell me about it,” said Rory. But they went back to snogging after a few moments anyway. They moved eventually to a slightly more private corner of a different room—one was that was less well lit.

 

“I was afraid for a moment there that you were using me to cheat or something,” Dalton told him eventually, when they had stopped and been talking slowly—amiably, almost—for a while.

 

Rory didn’t call him out on the abrupt topic change. “No, no,” he said. “If I were dating Adrian, I’d never cheat on him. I—what I meant by that was that, if I was dating someone, I’d never cheat on them. Anyone. It wouldn’t have to be Adrian.”

 

“Do you fancy him?”

 

Rory thought about it for a moment, eyes on the moving party goers. “I used to, but I don’t anymore,” he lied.  In the distance, he could he the faint wailing of sirens, coming to break up the party.

 

 

XXX

 

 

The image was stuck in Adrian’s mind’s eye, which was a new and creative form of torture. He’d watched Rory snog the stranger for a few moments before he’d found his voice and now the image of it was stuck in his mind and Adrian couldn’t do _anything_ to get rid of it.

 

He had left the room and tossed his cup onto a couch, where it would later be sat on, more than likely, and sought out Mels, bid her goodnight, and left.

 

The air was muggy and warm outside—summer weather was still in full swing, despite school having started recently. Adrian could count the number of days in school this year so far on one hand. So he walked home with his short sleeved button up undone. His binder looked enough like an undershirt to be mistaken for one—it was full length—so he had nothing to worry about.

 

—other than that _image_ , to be precise.

 

Rory was his best mate, Adrian reasoned. Nobody wanted to see their best mate in the middle of snogging a stranger.

 

“I don’t fancy him,” Adrian said aloud, mostly a mumble. Then, because he had to make himself believe it, he said it again, a bit louder, “I don’t fancy Rory. I _don’t_ fancy my best mate.”

 

“Good luck with that, mate!” someone—a teen, likely heading to or heading from the same place as Adrian—called from across the street. Adrian gave him the finger, in no mood for conversation. “Yeah, fuck you too!” the stranger shouted back. Adrian walked onwards.

 

When Adrian unlocked the front door to his house, he found his Aunt Sharon in the sitting room, drinking a cup of tea and working on a knitting project.  
  
“Hello Amelia,” she said. “You’re home earlier than you said you would be.”

 

“Yeah,” said Adrian. “The party got boring. I’m going up to bed—night.”

 

“Good night, Amelia.”

 

Adrian was past the point of wondering when his aunt would start calling him Adrian instead of Amelia. He didn’t understand why it was so hard for his Aunt Sharon to get it into her head that he was Adrian and not Amelia. So, he ignored that, and headed upstairs to his room instead. He took a shower and brushed his teeth and pulled on his pajamas. And then he lay in bed and attempted to convince himself that he did not, no matter what his feelings were doing, fancy the pants off of Rory.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Rory was grinning when he met with Mels and Adrian at the park the next day, late afternoon. Adrian noticed that a taller person was walking behind him, and nearly jumped when he realized it was the same person that Rory had been snogging at the party the previous night.

 

“Hi Adrian, hullo Mels,” said Rory as he and Dalton approached. “How’re you holding up, Mels?”

 

“Let me go home and die,” she groaned.  She sat down and flopped onto her back and threw her arms over her face. Adrian sat down beside her and Rory did the same, motioning for Dalton to do so as well.

 

“How much did you have to drink?”

 

“A lot,” she laughed, “but it was worth it.”

 

“Are you so sure about that now?” Adrian asked.

 

“…no,” said Mels. Dalton laughed.

 

“Right,” Rory said. “Mels, have you ever met Dalton before?”

 

“No,” she said.

 

“Well, this is Dalton. Dalton, this is Mels. She was behind the whole party last night.”

 

“I thought that was Ryan Delcini’s house,” Dalton said.

 

“It is, yeah, but Mels was the one who made it into a party,” said Rory.

 

“Brilliant,” said Dalton.

 

“You weren’t the one who had to go over and help clean it up this morning,” said Adrian.

 

Mels laughed. Adrian rolled his eyes at Mels, since she hadn’t done any cleaning at all. Nobody had expected her to help, but still. She could have. It would only have been polite.

 

“Anyway,” said Rory. “It was a great party Mels, but it did get a bit out of hand.”

 

“Out of hand?” Mels asked innocently. She tossed one arm off of her face to raise an eyebrow at Rory. “How so?”

 

“Well, the cops showing up and one in the morning would be a testament to it having gotten out of hand,” Rory said dryly.

 

“You stayed until one?” Adrian asked, surprised. That was unexpected, coming from Rory. He hadn’t thought that Rory would have particularly wanted to walking home at that hour.

 

“Well, yeah.” said Rory. “I didn’t really see a reason not to. It’s not like I was drinking and it wasn’t like my dad was going to ground me for being out late.”

 

“Besides, I walked him home. He was perfectly safe.” Dalton grinned at Rory, who blushed a little and grinned back, and then looked away.

 

Adrian noticed how close Dalton was sitting to Rory and tried not to let it bother him.

 

 

XXX

 

 

It slowly became a fact that Rory and Dalton were dating. And as that happened, Adrian became increasingly aware of how annoyed by that fact he was. He told himself that it was Rory’s annoying constant cheerfulness and their public displays of affection (which began after around a month) that bugged him. He told himself it was because he was used to Rory always hanging out with _him_ and being around _him_ and spending his spare time at _his_ house, but now he was hanging out with Dalton in the time that he could have—and used to—spend hanging out with Adrian.

 

Well. It’s not like Adrian was actively wishing that they would break up—because that would upset Rory, more than likely—but he did really want things to go to the way that they had been pre-Dalton.

 

They were out for a movie one night, the four of them. It was a new movie, one of those silly animated ones that Rory adored and that Adrian sort of liked, but only because Rory liked them so much. (Mels only sat through so she could mooch on Adrian’s popcorn and make extremely inappropriate sexual innuendos about the movie.)

 

But this time, Rory had made it into a date with Dalton, so Adrian and Mels wound up sitting directly behind them two rows back.

 

“Yuck,” said Mels at their sickeningly cute display of cuddling. Adrian wasn’t sure if they were paying attention to the movie at all, for all the cuddling.

 

“Agreed,” he muttered. He took a handful of popcorn and crammed as much of it into his mouth as possible. Most of it just fell onto his lap, not having made it into his mouth.

 

“We should break them up,” Mels whispered.

 

He attempted to protest, but it was weak: “That would make Rory unhappy.”

“So?” she took a great scoop of Adrian’s popcorn and began to throw kernels one by one at the back of Dalton’s head. He didn’t notice, even when one bounced off of the top of his ear.

 

“So he’d be really mad at us,” said Adrian. “And besides, we don’t even have a good reason to.”

 

“What, besides them disgustingly cute together and being completely wrong for each other? Huh. I think those are pretty good reasons.”

 

“Just…don’t do anything rash. Or stupid.” Adrian whispered eventually, despite agreeing with her, deep down.

  
“You two are always telling me not to be stupid,” complained Mels. “What, it’s like I can’t make my own smart decisions.”

 

“Because you _can’t_ ,” Adrian reminded her. “It wasn’t such a bright idea when you decided to steal those lemon scented—”

 

“Shhhhh!” hissed someone from behind them. Adrian rolled his eyes and Mels whispered louder to spite the woman who had shushed them.

 

“God, it’s like, you’d think you were my parents,” she laughed.

 

“Sometimes, it feels like we very well might be,” said Adrian.

 

 

XXX

 

 

_New Text:_

_From: Rory_

_To: Adrian_

_I hve a cluedo brd u kno_

_From: Adrian_

_To: Rory_

_safe to assume a game night is on?_

_From: Rory_

_To: Adrian_

_u bet! and u cld hlp me with that history revw_

_From: Adrian_

_To: Rory_

_thts not as fun as cluedo_

_From: Rory_

_To: Adrian_

_wellll ookk, we can just do cluedo. and life_

_From: Adrian_

_To: Rory_

_i am not playing u at life ever again. that is an accdnt which will nvr b repeated._

_From: Rory_

_To: Adrian_

_lol well will u cme over anywy?_

_From: Adrian_

_To: Rory_

_Of course._

 

 

XXX

 

 

“Seriously?” Adrian said, standing in the doorway of Rory’s room. “You had all that time to set up the board, and you’re still working on it?”

 

Rory threw a game piece at him. “That’s not fair.”

 

“How’s it not fair? You texted me at _lunch time_ , and now it’s like, dark out.”

 

“I feel like you shouldn’t be allowed to criticize me,” Rory said, sulkily. “It’s been ages since we’ve had a game night.”

 

Adrian felt himself soften a bit at that. He’d been ready to continue egging Rory on about it, but instead he shook his head to clear the thoughts away. “That’s true,” he said.

 

“If you’re done mocking me, will you hand me the instructions? And help?” Rory pointed to the game box, which had been kicked over to the wall by the door.

 

Adrian shut the door and handed Rory the instructions. He flopped down on the floor, across the board from Rory as Rory unfolded the instructions and flipped them over a couple times.

 

“Oh, give that to me,” Adrian laughed, snatching the instructions from Rory’s hands. Their fingers brushed, and without any warning, Adrian felt his fingers spasm. He dropped the paper; it fell onto the board and knocked over a game piece. He snatched it back up before Rory could comment.

 

With Adrian in charge of getting the game set up, it wasn’t long before they were playing. Adrian’s heart had not slowed down; it was still beating that too-fast rhythm, and his skin still felt flushed, and it was completely ridiculous. This was, after all, only _Rory_ , not to mention he was already dating someone.

 

With that reminder, it occurred to Adrian to glance around Rory’s room. “I’m surprised that this place hasn’t been…” he trailed off, not sure how to word it other than _boyfriend-infested_.

 

“Hm?” Rory glanced around as well. “Hasn’t been what? Rearranged? Because you were there last time we tried to reorganize and it was a _disaster._ ” He laughed, remembering.

 

“I still haven’t recovered from falling off of your shelf,” Adrian said, doing his best to sound wounded.

 

“It was your own fault for trying to climb it.”

 

“You were the one who was too short to reach all the stuff that was on top!”

 

“We could have asked my dad to get it down, you know!”

 

And they dissolved into helpless giggles at the memory.

 

“I’m so glad that I’ve gotten taller,” Rory said, between helpless, breathless laughs. “No more shelf-climbing for you, Adrian.”

 

“You think you’re _sooo_ tall,” Adrian replied, “but you’ve only got two inches on me, and only three on Mels.”

 

“I’m four inches taller than Dalton,” Rory said, eyebrows wiggling.

 

Adrian paused. “…really?” The image of Dalton and Rory kissing at the party flew into his mind and he ducked his head, hoping to hide the fact that his cheeks were suddenly on fire.

 

“No!” Rory laughed. “I’ve got only…like, half an inch on him, maybe? I don’t know.” He thought for a second. “Yeah, maybe like an inch. But not _four_. I wish.”  

 

“Dalton’s not that short,” Adrian mumbled. He picked up his game piece and toyed with it, for lack of anything else to do with his hands.

 

“He’s really not,” agreed Rory. “And anyway, I can’t believe you used to be so much taller than me, Adrian. It’s weird to think, now.”

 

“Not for me. I can remember it _quite_ clearly,” Adrian finally looked up. He could only hope that his cheeks were no longer pink. “You were the shortest kid in class when we were ten—”

 

“That was a long time ago!”

 

And, Adrian realized, it had been; and yet, it had remained pretty much the same between them, and it would be a long time before anything really _did_ , if the past was anything to go by. Suddenly feeling relieved, and much more relaxed, Adrian grinned and shook his head.

 

“It’s your turn,” he said, replacing his piece on the board.

 

“Was it? I don’t remember.”

 

“Yeah,” said Adrian. “It is.”

 

 

XXX

 

 

**Sixteen**

 

Rory got up at eleven at night to answer the doorbell. It was Adrian.

 

“You know, this isn’t the first time you’ve done this,” said Rory, opening the door wider to let him in.

 

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Adrian said, sounding annoyed and sarcastic. Rory noticed that his eyes were red. “I can always go sleep on a park bench.”

 

“No, no, I wasn’t saying you had to leave,” said Rory. “It’s just…it’s been a while since we’ve hung out, just the two of us. And I was just saying this isn’t the first time you’ve come by this time of night with a backpack and no forewarning. I was just…commenting.”

 

Adrian was silent, stepping through the door heading towards Rory’s room. Rory shut and locked the front door, and followed him.

 

Adrian stepped inside Rory’s bedroom and immediately realized just how long it had been since he’d been there. The one major difference was the wall above Rory’s desk: where as it had previously been a couple photographs and Rory and his family, Rory and Adrian, them and Mels, it was now covered with other things: Rory and Dalton in a photo booth strip or five, Rory and Dalton with their arms around each other, Rory and Dalton in nice clothing—probably off to a school dance—Rory and Dalton, Rory and Dalton, Rory and Dalton.

 

 _Boyfriend-infested,_ Adrian thought, and turned his eyes away. He wondered if he could spend his entire stay at Rory’s house without looking at the one wall at all and whether or not that was even possible.

 

Rory shuffled in and closed the door behind him.

 

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to just get back under the covers,” said Rory. “I’m freezing.”

 

“I’m probably colder than you are right now,” said Adrian. “I was just outside. I walked over. ”

 

Rory laughed a little. “Do you want to share my bed? If not, I can dig out a sleeping bag for you, though the ground is probably freezing. And hard. And….wooden.”

 

Adrian thought for a moment, and then—awkwardly—said, “I’ll share your bed.” It was a pretty wide bed. They could both keep to their own side.

 

“Hop in when you’re ready. Well. Don’t hop. Just. Get. You know.” He crawled onto the bed, and across it, and then snuggled down under the quilt.

 

“Yeah,” Adrian laughed a little bit. “I know.” And once he was in his pajamas, he climbed under the covers beside Rory.

 

“Are you gunna tell me what’s wrong this time?” Rory asked.    

 

“I had a fight with Aunt Sharon,” said Adrian. “I finally just asked her to call me Adrian instead of Amelia and she got really upset and went on this rant about it being time for me to stop acting like I’m a boy.”

 

“I’m sorry,” said Rory, quietly. “That really sucks.”

 

“Yeah. And then I yelled at her about gender identity and stuff and she said she didn’t want to talk about it anymore so I just got my stuff and came here.” He sighed. “I really want the surgery, Rory.”

 

“Yeah?” he said. “Well, I bet that if the Doctor were here, he’d use his fixes-anything-and-everything sonic screwdriver to fix you.”

 

Adrian gave a weak laugh at Rory’s attempt to lighten the mood. “That would be something,” he said faintly.

 

“Too bad he’s imaginary,” said Rory.

 

“He’s not.”

  
“He is. It’s just a game.”

 

“He _is_ , Rory, and he’s coming back one day. And then you’ll see just how real he is.”

 

“Of course,” said Rory, not wanting to argue. “How silly of me to think otherwise.” They were silent for a while, lying on their backs. Rory was drifting off to sleep, but then something occurred to him. “Can’t you get the surgery legally when you’re, what was it, eighteen?”

 

“Might be twenty,” said Adrian.

 

“Yeah, so if we save you up a bunch of money, you could get it done. And if we save all the money, then your aunt won’t have to pay a single pound for it.”

 

“Let’s do that, then,” said Adrian. Rory thought about responding, but Adrian’s breathing soon evened out into the pattern of sleep.

 

Rory turned onto his side to look at Adrian. There wasn’t much light with the blinds shut, but once his eyes adjusted, he was able to make out Adrian’s features, and a great wave of affection and longing crashed over him, and damn it. He still fancied Adrian, and quite a bit at that, too.

 

 

XXX

 

 

It wasn’t like Adrian was overjoyed to get the news from Mels that Rory and Dalton had broken up. He’d just been a little pleased is all, and since that wasn’t very nice, he’d tried to hide it. Unfortunately, Mels had seen right through.

 

“Why are you so happy about that?” Mels had ben badgering him about it all day, since she had told him in their first class of the day. It was fourth period, just before lunch.

 

“I’m not,” replied Adrian for what felt like the millionth time.

 

“You are,” said Mels. “I _have_ eyes, Adrian. Just tell me why.”

 

Adrian rolled his eyes and dropped his book bag on the ground beside his desk. “I won’t, because I’m not.” he said as he sat down.

 

Mels sat down as well. “Come on, it’s not like I’ll tell Rory.”

 

“Yeah, because there’s nothing to tell! Just drop it already, Mels. It’s getting really annoying.”

 

Mels huffed and put her head down on her arms. “Seriously, the two of you are _thick_ ,” she said.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“O _h_ , n _oth_ ing,” Mels said. “Nothing at all.”

 

Adrian knew that when Mels took that tone and those raised eyebrows, there was no arguing with her and no getting any information out of her, either. So he decided to ignore the comment, because no matter what she thought, he was not being stupid, intentionally _or_ unintentionally, about anything.  

 

However, several days later, Adrian was absolutely _done_ with her nagging. “Yeah, okay,” he said to Mels. It was like she knew what he was going to say, and just needed him to actually say it in order to…do something. What that something was, Adrian had no idea, and he was a bit afraid to find out. But he found himself saying aloud: “So maybe I fancy Rory a little bit. Now stop badgering me!”

 

Mels’s grin was all teeth. “Oh, no worries,” she said. “I’ll stop now.”

 

 

XXX

 

 

Adrian and Mels had all of the same morning classes. This included History, which—today—meant listening to her tell their teacher that one reason Hitler rose to power was the fact that the Doctor didn’t stop him.

 

And it meant watching their History teacher’s jaw tighten, and then loosen again as he restrained himself from sighing. “Mels—go to the Headmaster, now.” Which meant that Adrian was going to have to go wait there for her during lunch—again.

 

Adrian didn’t bother to try to berate her with his stare as she packed up her things, smug, and left. It would have been useless, as it had been the previous ten times this had happened.

 

It wasn’t like Mels acting out and doing (and saying) stupid things was a recent development—she had always done that. But lately, Mels had been getting into trouble more and more with alarming frequency. Whereas she used to be in detention—on average—one as week, it was now nearly every other day—and usually for stupid incidents like this, but last week Mels had been suspended for punching someone.

 

Adrian wasn’t sure what Mels hoped to achieve by doing all this.

 

“Mels, universities won’t want you if you have such a bad record,” had been Adrian’s argument last week.

 

“What if I don’t want to go to university?” had been Mels’s counter argument. “ _You_ don’t even know if _you’re_ going to university.”

 

So this time Adrian enlisted Rory to talk to Mels at lunch break. They waited for her outside of the headmaster’s office, and ran after her when she was let out, just before the bell signaling the end of the lunch period.

 

“Mels,” said Rory, using his best ‘disappointed’ voice, which wasn’t actually all that disappointed sounding. Mels rolled her eyes at him, tossing her bag over her shoulder.

 

“Mels!” Adrian tried. It didn’t have any affect.

 

“You’re doing this on purpose,” said Rory when they caught up with her. “All of this trouble making. But what’s the point?”

 

“It’s fun!” said Mels. She laughed a bit. “There’s no reason not to have fun in life.”

 

“Don’t you care at all about your future?”

 

Mels raised her eyebrows at them, spinning around. “I already know how it’s going to go,”

 

“Do you,” said Adrian.

 

“Yes,” said Mels, “and I’m fine with how it’s going to go, so I’m not going to worry about it.”

 

 

XXX

 

 

**Seventeen**

Both Rory and Adrian could tell that Mels was plotting something, but neither of them knew what, exactly, or why, or when—or any other helpful information that would help them keep her out of jail, really. But since they didn’t get anything out of her, Adrian wound up having to pay bail for her when she stole a bus.

 

A _bus_.  

 

“A bus, Mels! You stole a _bus_. Why did you steal a _bus_?” Adrian was looming over Mels, who was lounging on his bed, twirling around Adrian’s old model time machine and smirking.

 

“I was late,” said Mels. “So I took the bus. Lots of people do that.”

 

“You stole the bus, Mels,” said Rory. “There’s a difference. And you drove it through the Gardens!”

 

“Shortcut,” she said, flippant.

 

Adrian snatched the time machine from her and threw it at Rory, perhaps with more force than necessary. He fumbled it, but didn’t drop it. “Why can’t you just act like a normal person for once? A normal person who doesn’t have detention every day and suspensions for punching people and arrests on their records—a normal, legal person.”

 

“Well, it’s not hard for _you_ ,” she said to Adrian, sitting up and swinging her legs off the bed. “You’ve got Mr. Perfect keeping you in line.” She gestured grandly towards Rory. Adrian’s eyes, however, went to the blue Police Box he was holding.

 

“The Doctor isn’t even real, Mels. He’s just a story.” Not like he necessarily believed that—it was easier to say, though. Rory looked at the time machine in his hands and place, and then placed it on Adrian’s desk.

 

“I wasn’t talking about the Doctor,” Mels sat up and gave Rory a look, eyebrows up. There was a small grin on her face, and Rory realized that the grin meant he did not want to be around any longer. Feeling that it would be best to leave, since Mels was clearly up to _something_ , he made for the door.

 

“…what, Rory?” Adrian asked. “I haven’t _got_ Rory.”

 

“Yes, you do,” said Mels.

 

“No, he hasn’t,” Rory protested, rather than leaving, and something in the pit of his stomach told him maybe it wasn’t such a great idea. Regardless, his mouth kept going. “He hasn’t _got_ me. How has Adrian _got_ me?”

 

“In the same way you’ve got him,” said Mels.

 

Adrian shook his head. “Yeah, no. Nice thought, Mels, but it’s never going to happen.”

 

And here it was, Rory thought, the rejection he’d always known was going to happen. “Yeah, never going to happen,” he said, but it sounded sort of flat and untrue in his own ears.

 

“I mean, Rory’s gay,” Adrian threw an arm around Rory’s shoulders. “And I’m trans. So it’ll never work.”

 

Rory paused. That was not the reason he was expecting to hear. “What? That’s not why I—why would that stop…stuff? Us, I mean. Why would that…prevent…you know,” he trailed off, painfully aware of the fact that Mels was still sitting on Adrian’s bed and grinning as though she had just won the lottery. He shook his  head and scampered into the hallway.

 

“But you like blokes,” said Adrian, following him.

 

“Yeah,” said Rory. “You’re a bloke.” He glanced back at Adrian, but continued down the stairs.

 

“But not…technically.” Adrian looked pained to admit it, still following.

 

They reached the bottom of the steps. Rory stopped short, and turned around. Adrian was still lingering on the last step so Rory had to look up slightly to meet his eyes. “You’re still a bloke. You think like a bloke and you…you identify as a bloke, so that makes you a bloke, essentially, doesn’t it?”

 

“But—” said Adrian, sounding small.

 

Feeling brave, Rory asked, haltingly, “Do you want—to, to…? I mean, would you like to go out with me?”

 

“I…think so,” mumbled Adrian. “I mean, yeah, but…” He shook his head and stepped down, closer to Rory. “

 

 “Well, we can—”

 

Adrian laughed a little. “This is ridiculous,” he said.

 

Rory felt his heart sink into his stomach. “Yes, right. Completely ridiculous. So, I’ll just go, and then we’ll never have to mention this again—”

 

“No, you, you idiot face,” said Adrian. “Not that. That’s not ridiculous at all. It’s just that—it’s Mels. She was _so_ aiming for this to happen all along.”

 

“…maybe?” Rory said, thinking. It did make, sense, after all.

 

Adrian laughed. “Probably. So let’s make it count.” 

 

“Yeah,” Rory grinned, like his breath had been knocked out of him, “Let’s do that.” Cautiously, he reached out and put his hands on Adrian’s shoulders. Adrian, however, was not one to be restrained, and he surged upwards, arms snaking around Rory’s neck, to kiss him.

 

“Oi!” Mels hollered, leaning over the railing and looking down at them from the floor above. “Get a room!”

 

They, of course, ignored her.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“You know,” said Rory in a thoughtful way. He was lounging on his bed, watching Adrian as he rifled through Rory’s closet, dropping shirts and pants and jackets and other miscellaneous clothing items from within it as he disregarded them. “You’ve always worn my clothes, since we were kids, but now it’s taken on a completely new _subtext_.”

 

Adrian snorted and turned around just long enough to throw a tee (with the Super Mario Brothers on its front) at Rory’s head. He caught it.

 

“That’s because there _wasn’t_ any subtext when we were kids, Rory. We were _kids_.”

 

“Yeah, well,” Rory said, “You didn’t even let me finish my thought.”

 

“Oooh, my deepest and most sincere apologies,” Adrian said, one hand briefly touching over his heart. “Would you be so kind as to grace me—a mere mortal!—with the giving of your forgiveness, oh wise and—”

 

Rory threw the shirt back at Adrian. It hit his shoulder. “Oh, shut up! And hang that up, would you? You’re making a mess,” he laughed.

 

Adrian winked at him and then turned, glancing down at the piles of rejected shirts scattered about on the floor. “Sorry,” he said, sounding closer to meaning it this time. (But not completely.) He did not, however, start to pick after himself. He did quite the opposite, dropping the Mario shirt on top of a crumpled button down, which had been discarded when Adrian realized it was much too big for either of them.

 

Rory rolled his eyes but did not comment. Instead, he said, “You know you can borrow what ever you want—we don’t have to go through everything.”

 

“Last time I borrowed a shirt without asking, you like, blew a gasket.”

 

“ _That_ was not a t-shirt. That was my only dress shirt and you stained it right before I had to wear it to my dad’s work’s dinner thing. _That’s_ why I was mad. _That_ does mean we have to sit here and sort out what fits you and what’s okay for you to borrow.”

 

“I’m only trying to prevent a repeat of that,” Adrian said, ignoring the second part and returning to the closet. Most of its contents had been dislodged by this point. “I thought you’d be less upset.”

 

“I’m not upset,” Rory tried to protest. “I was just saying, we could find a better use of our time—”

 

Then, without any warning or shame, Adrian pulled off his slightly-on-the-clingy-side shirt over his head, revealing his back and short gray binder, and threw the old shirt over the footboard of Rory’s bed.

 

Rory stared, eyebrows twitched upwards. He cleared his throat. “….together,” he finished his sentence.

 

“If you’re suggesting snogging,” said Arian, cryptically, “I would normally agree, but I promise you, this is saving a lot of time in the future for snogging.”

 

“Right,” said Rory.

 

Adrian had found a black v-neck at the back of Rory’s (now nearly empty) closet and he held it up for Rory to pass judgement on.

 

“You can borrow that one,” he said, sitting up and scooting closer to footboard. “I forgot I even owned that.”

 

“Thanks,” said Adrian. He pulled it on over his head and adjusted the hem until it sat right on his frame; the more rectangular cut of it helped lend Adrian a boxier figure. “This fits so much better than that old thing.” He gestured vaguely to the one he’d taken off and thrown onto Rory’s bed.

 

Rory was reminded of a train of thought that had left him earlier. He licked his lips. “So, as I was saying earlier—subtext.”

 

“So?”

 

“So. It’s—you’re rather sexy, you know, when you wear my clothes. Not—not to say that you aren’t all the time, you know, you’re just. More so. In my stuff. It’s hot.” He shut his mouth, then, the confidence he had felt as he started talking suddenly disappearing.

 

Adrian froze, his face flushing a very faint pink, which, Rory was sure, matched his own. “You think?”

 

“Yes. I _so_ think. As in—I mean, yeah.”

 

By the time Rory had finished stumbling over his words, Adrian was grinning, all bold confidence and ease as he clambered over the footboard of Rory’s bed and more or less fell onto Rory. The falling did not dampen his grin, but it did cause them both to break out laughing.

 

“We could revisit your idea of snogging,” said Adrian, so Rory leaned into him and kissed him exactly as suggested, winding his arms around Adrian’s waist.

 

Adrian broke the kiss after a moment and pushed Rory onto his back to continue that way instead. He bracketed Rory’s head with his elbows and brought their mouths together once more, keeping himself propped above Rory until his arms shook. Rory, who had been alternating between keeping his hands rubbing Adrian’s side and back and being  in his hair or at his neck, noticed this and pulled back a bit for air.

 

“You can lie down,” he said, “if you want to.”

 

“I don’t want to squish you.”

 

“I’ll survive. You aren’t very heavy.”

 

Adrian tentatively lowered his weight onto Rory. Rory kissed along Adrian’s jaw, which caused him to squirm and laugh, so Rory moved on to the alternative—he pushed aside the collar of the v-neck shirt and began to suck at Adrian’s skin, a spot on his shoulder, beside the thick strap of his binder.

 

“I—what—” said Adrian, jerking back. “Wait, stop.”

 

Rory stopped. He dropped his head back onto his pillow as Adrian sat up and slapped the palm over the spot where Rory had been sucking, now recovered by the shirt.

 

“What’s wrong?” Rory asked, moving to sit up as well.

 

“It’s just—a….a love bite? Really?”

 

Rory gave a slight shrug. “They’re fun. But if you don’t want one, I’m not going to make you—”

 

“No, no, I…just, not right now. I’m…not really comfortable with that.”

 

Rory nodded. “Okay, and that’s fine. I—actually, you know what, let’s set some rules.” He clambered off of his bed and walked around it to his desk. He pulled his backpack from underneath and scrounged up a piece of lined paper and a pen. Along with a book to press on, he sat back down beside Adrian.

 

 _‘Adrian’s Rules_ ’, Rory titled the page. He numbered it down the side and wrote in the first one:

 

  1. No love bites.



 

“Yet,” said Adrian. Rory corrected it.

 

  1. No love bites. (Yet.)



 

“No touching the privates while snogging. Yet.”

 

  1. No touching privates when snogging. (Yet.)



 

“No…” Adrian chewed his lip, thinking.

 

“You know,” said Rory, tapping the pen against his teeth. “They don’t all have to be don’ts. There can be Dos.”

 

“Do…talk about stuff,” said Adrian, thinking aloud. “Like we are now.”

 

“That’s a very good Do,” Rory said as he added it to the list.

 

“Do tell me I’m hot,” Adrian said. “I liked that.”

 

Rory laughed. “I would do that even if you didn’t want to put it in the rules.” But he wrote it down, regardless.

 

“…Don’t tell anyone, yet,” Adrian said next. “I don’t want Sharon knowing—it. It wouldn’t be good. She’d try to use it as evidence against me to identify as a bloke.” He made a face.

 

Rory glanced at Adrian. “I already told my dad,” he said.

 

“He won’t tell Sharon, will he?”

 

“I’ll tell him not to.” Rory said, and wrote down the fifth rule. “But actually, that brings me to a question—where do you stand on public displays of affection?”

 

“Oh,” Adrian looked surprised, as though this factor hadn’t occur to him as a problem at all. “Uh—I don’t know.”

 

“Okay, so, for example. Can I hold your hand in public? Put my arm around your shoulders? Or waist?”

 

“Waist no, shoulders yes,” said Adrian. “Holding hands, I’m not sure. Not at school, I think, but maybe if we’re just hanging out at the park, that’d be fine.”

 

“What do you say about kissing in public?” Rory wiggled his eyebrows at Adrian, who laughed and shoved him in the shoulder.

 

“Not yet,” he said.

 

Rory added to the list:

 

6\. No kissing in public. (Yet) Do put arm around shoulders, not waist. No hand holding at school. Elsewhere depends—talk.

 

“That looks pretty good to me,” said Adrian. “Let’s hang it up or something.”

 

“Wait—” said Rory. “I’ve got one more—can I add it?”

 

“Sure, go ahead.”

 

7.  If someone asks if we’re dating, the answer is yes, because we are, and we’re not hiding.           We’re just not shouting it to everyone.

 

 

XXX

 

 

It wasn’t that Rory disliked Geoff. He liked him quite a bit, actually; they’d been really good friends for a long while, before they’d drifted apart. It was just that, currently, in the moment, Adrian liked him more.

 

So call Rory antisocial. That wouldn’t change the fact that he and Adrian had planned the day with Mels to be just the three of them, but at the last minute Geoff had called up Adrian to hang out and Adrian had, without consulting either Rory or Mels about it, invited him along.

 

Rory tried not to feel jealous of where Adrian’s current attention was (on Geoff) because he knew it was stupid and pointless and an overreaction to boot. Rory also told himself that it wouldn’t do to try and keep Adrian to himself, and keep him from other his other friends, because that was a horrible and possessive thing to do.

 

Rory knew this. It didn’t mean that he wanted to hang out with Geoff.

 

They were wandering around the mall, more or less aimlessly, after having gone in and out of several of the shops and finding nothing to buy. Mels and Geoff erupted into laughter as Adrian finished some story about last week, and Rory cracked a smile to go along with it. Truth was, he hadn’t been listening all that closely to Adrian’s adventure with a stray cat and a can of raviolis.

 

“Too bad you couldn’t have kept the cat,” said Geoff once he had regained his breath.

 

“Yeah, no, there’s no way Sharon would let me have a cat,” said Adrian.

 

“Controlling,” mumbled Rory. Adrian gave him a nod.

 

“Yeah,” he said, “I’ve been trying to avoid her recently. She has such ridiculous notions about how I’m supposed to act and what I’m supposed to wear. It’s so bloody _stupid_.”

 

“Where you’re supposed to go,” Rory added.

 

“Who you’re supposed to see,” Mels said, rolling her eyes in an exaggerated motion that included rolling her head as well.

 

“I honestly hate her sometimes,” said Adrian, in a rather nonchalant tone.

 

Geoff tilted his head just slightly. “Who is it that you’re not supposed to hang out with? According to your aunt,” he said.

 

“It’s not—” Adrian started at the same time that Mels said, “Rory,”

 

“What?” asked Geoff, glancing to Rory as if he would give a better explanation than Adrian or Mels. Rory blinked at him, a muscle in his jaw twitching as he clenched his teeth. “Why? That makes no sense.”

 

“It does,” said Mels, “when you consider the fact that Sharon is just a wee bit on the homophobic side.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Adrian hissed, grabbing at Mels’s arm as if trying to pull her away would make her quiet. She glanced over to Adrian as he did this, and it was clear from the look on her face that she had just realized what she hadn’t been supposed to say.

 

“Oh,” said Geoff, “That really sucks, mate.” He gave Rory a pat on the back, and Rory let himself hope that Geoff assumed wrongly: it was no secret that Rory had dated another bloke, after all. “It’s all fine.”

 

“I know that,” said Rory.

 

“The only one who doesn’t is my bloody aunt,” said Adrian, taking a moment to glare at Mels before moving the conversation swiftly along.

 

Later, Geoff lowered his voice and his head and asked Rory if he and Adrian were dating, and Rory, remembering Rule Seven, told him the truth, heart in his throat and hoping that Geoff wouldn’t go loud mouthing it around.

 

(He didn’t. Geoff, after all, was a sensible guy.)

 

XXX

 

 

Sharon sat on the tiny wire chair on the patio out front of the small coffee shop. It was fairly busy, with several others on the patio and quite a few sitting inside. Her feet were tapping out an impatient rhythm in their tight, shiny work shoes. She was waiting for Brian to show up, and was acting like he was late, when in fact it was only Sharon who had arrived early.

 

She had known Brian just as long as Adrian had known Rory, of course, but unlike those two, she and Brian had never been that close of friends. Rory’s mother had attempted a friendship with Sharon in the early years, but it had never really taken ahold. Ida stopped attempting friendship with Sharon after her relationship took a turn for the worse, anyway, and then she had moved and they had lost contact altogether—not that the relationship had been particularly close in the first place.

 

So this lunch break coffee meeting was a strange event, merely for the fact that one like it had never occurred before. The one thing that was not so odd about it was the anticipated topic: their children.

 

Because at this point, Adrian really was Sharon’s child, whether she had signed up for it initially or not.

 

“Sharon, hello,” said Brian, pulling out the chair across from Sharon with a noisy scrape. Sharon looked up from her phone and her thoughts as Brian sat, placing his drink on the table in front of him, along with a stack of papers. Sharon barely spared these things a glance.

 

She checked her watch. He was right on time. “Good afternoon, Brian,” she said, offering a slightly strained mile, which Brian returned, equally weary. “How are you?”

 

And so they engaged in several minutes of conversation which they both knew to be only pointless beating around the bush, touching on the subjects of the weather, the flu season, and Brian’s car, which had been to the repair shop recently, before finally transitioning to what they had met to talk about.

 

“Well, it can’t have escaped your notice that Adrian and Rory are dating, now,” Brian said, casual, after a long sip of his coffee and a deep breath for courage.

 

“Yes, they’re both horrible at keeping secrets.” Sharon said. At first she had been a bit hurt at their horribly obvious lies, but after thinking about her relationship with Adrian, Sharon was sad to admit that it wasn’t very surprising. Sharon looked at Brian, silent, while he waited for her to say something more.

 

She didn’t.

 

“Sharon,” said Brian, setting down his drink and laying a hand on the pile of papers, “I know it’s something you’ve protested against all these years, but honestly, it’s getting old.”

 

Sharon feigned ignorance. “What do you mean?”

 

“You know perfectly well what I mean,” said Brian. Annoyance leaked into his previously completely patient tone.

 

Since she did know, Sharon remained quiet. She sighed softly, an exhale from her nose.

 

“It’s time that you educated yourself on the matter of transgender individuals and tried to understand Adrian.”

 

Sharon opened her mouth automatically to correct the name, but paused and closed her mouth. She felt indignant, embarrassed, small—as though she were a child once more, being scolded harshly by her parents for something she had already realized for herself was wrong. Sharon had always been a stubborn person, and it had always been hard for her to admit when she was wrong; but now she was tired and wiling to hear Brian out.

 

She had been leaning forward; now, she forced herself to relax and sit back slightly.

 

This did not go unnoticed by Brian. He saw Sharon hold her tongue, and, while not knowing the precise train her thoughts had taken, saw that she was not going to interrupt. But instead of speaking further, her fixed Sharon with a look and pushed his pile of papers across the tabletop to her.

 

She glanced down. Her eyes finally caught the title of the packet onto: _What Does the Term ‘Transgender’ Mean? A Guide to Understanding the Meaning of the Term_

 

The look that Brian had fixed her had very nearly said _‘grow up_ ’. Adrian had been doing a lot of growing up, as a teen, and had always been rather mature; perhaps it was time for Sharon to follow his example.

 

Sharon’s nose itched, and her face very nearly burned. God, she really had been a child about this, hadn’t she?

 

She stood. Her chair scraped loudly against the cement.

 

“Thank you for your…help,” she said brusquely, sweeping up the stack of papers and shoving it under her arm. “This has been very…informative.”

 

“Read those,” said Brian as he stood as well. “Every single word. You hear? I don’t think you’ve ever seen the damage you’ve caused to Adrian by not accepting him and by trying to change him. And if you’re a decent person, or ever aspire to be, you’re going to read every single one of those pages and try to fix your bigoted mistakes.”

 

Sharon swallowed, twice, before managing out any words. “Of course,” she said, and offered a stiff smile. Any more words, she was sure, and she would lose the last of her composure and turn into so  a confused, crying mess.

 

“Good,” said Brian. He stood and took his empty styrofoam cup, and departed with a short, “Good afternoon,” to which Sharon was only able to nod and then take leave herself.

 

It was time to think all of the things that she had avoided thinking for years; it was time to face them. Sharon finally realized this.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Sharon spent the weekend after the meeting reading what Brian had given her, as well as doing her own researching. She more or less threw herself into becoming education on the subject. And then she sat on all this new information for a while and turned it over in her mind, and tried to translate it to her life and to Adrian. After a few weeks of processing (hey, Sharon had never claimed to be the most intelligent) she tried to adjust her thinking from _Amelia,_ where it had stubbornly been for ten years, to _Adrian_ , and was surprised to find it was rather easy to make the transition.

 

Not long after, she tried the name aloud, casually: “Adrian, what would you prefer for dinner? There’s chicken, or there’s some left over lamb, which we could make into a stew or kebabs, or something, which might be easier.”

 

“I’d go for kebabs,” said Adrian idly. Sharon watched him from the hallway as he froze and sat up straighter in the armchair across the living room. He stared at Sharon as though she had grown a second head, or a third eye, or a tail.

 

Sharon offered a weak smile.

 

Adrian only stared. He slid back down in the armchair, and then slowly looked away from his aunt and back down to his phone.

 

“Lamb kebabs it is, then,” Sharon said, and went back into the kitchen to make dinner.

 

A few minutes later, Adrian wandered in, affecting a casual air.

 

“Smells good,” he said conversationally, nodding to the lamb on the counter, ready to be skewered.

 

“Mmhmm,” said Sharon.

 

When it became clear to Adrian that Sharon wasn’t going to say anything, Adrian became hesitate to start the conversation either. But he was too curious to keep silent for very long.

 

Sharon continued to chop the red pepper.

 

“Just now—just then you called me Adrian,” he said, speaking low and fast. “But you always call me Amelia. What—why the change?”

 

Sharon gave a long exhale through her nose and continued to chop.

 

Adrian waited impatiently for a reply, tapping an uneven rhythm on the countertop.

 

Sharon finished the pepper and moved over to start putting the kebabs together to go into the oven.

 

“Brian gave me some information on…transgender people,” she said when the silence could go on no longer. “A few weeks ago, actually. Maybe a couple months.” She shook her head. “And I did some research of my own and I thought…I…well…” She realized her hands had begun to shake as she attempted to skewer the lamb and the pepper. She put it down, but couldn’t make herself look away from it and at Adrian instead. “I’ve been so horrible to you, haven’t I?” She didn’t actually want an answer and kept talking. “And I never even gave you a chance. So. Here I am, giving you a long over-due chance.”

 

Adrian looked at her, pressing his lips together into a thin, pale line. He took a long moment to put together the proper words.

 

“I’m glad you see, now,” he said eventually, slowly, voice still low. “But I’ve not forgiven you—yet—for…misgendering me for so long. But…thank you. For trying now. Finally.”

 

“It…can’t be that hard for me to adjust to,” Sharon said, feeling the need to say something, _anything_ , in order to prevent another silence. “After all—I’m going to try, I really am, to…view you as you are not how I thought you were supposed to be.”

 

She picked up the kebabs and finished putting them together. Adrian was silent as she loaded them into the over and pressed several buttons.

 

“Either way,” Adrian said, starting to leave. He paused. “You trying, it…means something to me.”

 

Sharon didn’t think it was her place to say ‘ _you’re welcome_ ’, so she didn’t.

 

 

XXX

 

 

**Eighteen**

 

“I don’t want you to be mad,” said Adrian. “I think it’s pretty likely that you’re going to be mad anyway, but just keep in mind that I don’t want you to be.” His fingers tightened around Rory’s arm. They had met for dinner and were now taking a very mature and adult-like stroll through the park, merely because they were eighteen and it seemed like the mature, adult thing to do on a date. It had been going well until Adrian had grabbed Rory’s arm and started babbling.

 

Rory, feeling slightly nervous, said, “What?”

 

“I got a job,” said Adrian.

 

The nervousness disappeared, replaced swiftly by relief and then happiness. “Well, that’s good!” he said, “You’ve been applying all over the place—”

 

“As a Kiss-o-Gram,” Adrian finished.

 

“As a what?” Rory asked, though he feared he could guess.

 

“A Kiss-o-Gram,” Adrian repeated. His blunt nails were digging into Rory’s skin. “I’ll go to parties and kiss people. It’s just a bit of fun. Don’t be mad.” The last sentence was added hastily, in response to the expression that had appeared on Rory’s face while Adrian had been giving his brief explanation.

 

“I don’t like that,” Rory said.

 

“You don’t have to like it,” Adrian snapped. His hands fell from Rory’s arms and stuck into his pockets.

 

“I thought that you didn’t want me to be mad,” Rory pointed out.

 

“I don’t,” said Adrian. “But you don’t exactly have to like it either, because I’m going to do it. I need to start saving up money.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I do have plans to get a serious education sometime,” Adrian mumbled. “I know you’re going to be a nurse and all that, but I don’t know yet. I don’t know what I want to do with my life.”

 

Rory let this process for a moment. Spotting a park bench up ahead, he headed towards it. Adrian lingered behind him and then followed. Once they were both sitting—Rory slumped and head tilted back to look at the darkening sky, and Adrian leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his toes tapping out a fast rhythm—Rory sighed.

 

“Okay, listen,” said Rory. “I get that. Money is a big motivating factor for everything. But does it _have_ to be kissing people? I mean, I don’t want you to kiss anybody but me.” And he hated how pathetic his voice sounded, saying that last part out loud. Other couples didn’t have to worry about this. And then he backtracked on that thought, considering all of those who had been cheated on. He wondered, briefly, if this could be considered adultery.

 

Adrian didn’t respond. He was quiet so long that Rory glanced over at him, half to make sure he was still there, and half to make sure that Adrian hadn’t begun to ignore him and the conversation. Rory watched Adrian as he thought. Eventually, Adrian said, “They’re the only people that accepted me. I don’t have any special talent and I don’t have any previous jobs to brag about. I just—I’m not a very good candidate for anything, not even to be a secretary.”

 

Rory did not have to consider his next question very long before he asked it. “Do you _want_ to kiss other people?”

 

Adrian did not consider very long, either. “No.”

 

And, Rory decided, he had to choose his battles. “Alright,” he said, eventually. “As long as I’m the one you come back to.”

 

Adrian rested his hand on Rory’s clenched on his thigh. “Of course,” he said, and then, “Oh god, that sounds cheesy.”

 

But it didn’t matter, because Rory leaned forward and placed one hand on the side of Adrian’s face, wound the fingers of their other hands together, and kissed him, because the kisses that Adrian gave to Rory were, after all, the ones that mattered.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Adrian and Rory had half the same courses, and two of those they had during the same period. Early in the year, their teachers had learned to separate them to either side of the classroom, as it was the only way to prevent them from talking (though not necessarily from passing notes. Or texting each other.)

 

On this particular day, nearer to the end of the school year than not—mainly signified by the number of tests per class skyrocketing—Adrian and Rory, separated by the majority of the classroom, their classmates, and the desks of those classmates, were both finished with their test but not allowed to do anything else. So they were texting, as bored teenagers are prone to doing.

 

Adrian wasn’t doing the idiotically happy grin at his phone on purpose. It was Rory’s fault, really, because Rory was being way too fucking adorable. And even though Adrian couldn’t see himself doing the stupid grin, Mr. Devlin certainly could.

 

“What’s made your day, Mr. Pond?” he asked, loudly, from the front of the room where he was surveying the last few test takers as they scratched frantically at their papers.

 

Adrian’s head shot up. He attempted to stick his phone quickly into his pocket. “Nothing, sir,” he said, but the grin was still sticking with his facial muscles. His phone clattered to the floor. He bent over to pick it up as quickly as he could. 

 

Mr. Devlin was a cool teacher. Never let it be said that he wasn’t. If there was any class that this was going to happen in, Adrian would have chosen Mr. Devlin’s fourth period English class.

 

Mr. Devlin raised an eyebrow. “That wasn’t a _nothing_ smile,” he said. “I’ve been teaching teenagers long enough to pick up these things. I’ll bet you a twenty that you’ve been texting your girlfriend.”

 

Adrian’s ears went pink, as did the rest of his face, and across the room, Rory was much the same. By this point, many of Adrian’s classmates were watching Adrian and Mr. Devlin with curiosity.

“You’d owe me a twenty, then,” Adrian managed to say.  
  
“See, I’m very sure that was the face of that of a teenager in love,” said Mr. Devlin.

 

“I—” Adrian said. He glanced at Rory, who had been watched him. “I wasn’t saying you were wrong about that part,” said Adrian. Rory gave him the tiniest of nods, and the biggest of grins when he saw where Adrian was going. “I was saying you were wrong about the girlfriend part, because I wasn’t texting my girlfriend—which I don’t even have, mind you, actually—I was texting my boyfriend.”

 

“All the same,” said Mr. Devlin as though Adrian hadn’t just come out in the middle of his class. “You’re not allowed to text while there are tests out. Grin all soppy at your boyfriend after class.”

 

“Right,” said Adrian faintly, trying to ignore all of the sets of eyes on him but unable to, because he could still see Rory out of the corner of his eye, across the room, grinning like a madman down at his desk.

 

(Later, he’d hear it from Mels, big time. She’d get so mad for the fact that she wasn’t there when it happened. It was a grudge that Adrian knew that Mels would hold, literally, until the end of time.)

 

 

XXX

 

Mels through the letters—marked with the names of different universities—that had been, just now, sitting in a nice pile on the coffee table in the Williams’ living room, into the air.

 

“Mels!” yelped Rory. “Those are important!” and he scurried over to collect the tossed envelopes from the floor.

 

“You haven’t even opened any of them yet,” she said, flopping down onto the couch and putting her feet on the coffee table, now free of uni letters. “Do you even know if you’re going?”

 

“Yes,” said Rory, sweeping the last letter into his arms and taking them to the kitchen table instead. “I am going. I’m going to be nurse.”

 

“I don’t see why you don’t just do the whole thing and become a doctor,” Mels rolled her eyes. Rory couldn’t see. He was still in the kitchen.

 

“I don’t want to be a doctor,” he said. “I want to be a nurse.”

 

“What’s the appeal?”

 

“I want to help people. You know.”

 

“I know.” She’d heard it a hundred and three times at this point, ever since Rory had decided on becoming a nurse during the previous summer, when it had been about the right time to begin applying to universities. “You could still do that as a doctor.”

 

Rory reentered the living room. “Yeah, but that would be all diagnosing colds and doling out antibiotics. I don’t want to do that.”

 

“You make a lot of money.”

 

“It’s not the money,” said Rory, sighing. “I want to actually be in a hospital, and help the people come in, right then and there.”

 

“You could be an A&E doctor!” said Mels, an old argument.

 

“I don’t understand why you object so much to me being a nurse!” said Rory, an old argument as well.

 

They’d had this exact argument before. Usually, Mels would make another snappy comment and it would continue, but today she fell silent, staring at the ceiling fan making its slow, lazy circles, not cooling the room one bit.

 

“All of the nursing unis are more than an hour away,” said Mels. “The nearest doctor uni is only a town over.”

 

Rory knew this. “Are you going to miss me that much?” he asked, teasing.

 

“No,” snorted Mels. “But Adrian will.”

 

“No he won’t. He needs room to breathe too, you know.”

 

“And you know,” said Mels, sitting up and leaning forward to lock eyes with Rory, “that Adrian has grown up with you around. He’s not used to _having room to breathe_.”

 

“Yeah, well,” said Rory, feeling uncomfortable, “I’m still going to be a nurse. And…and,” something occurred to him then, “I can ask Adrian to come with me. We can have a tiny flat, and I can go to uni every day and he can find some job he likes, and it can be all horribly domestic and brilliant.”

 

Mels got an odd look on her face, a combination of gushy happiness and left-out-longing-lonely. But it was gone quickly, replaced with a neutral expression, but that was just as odd. 

“Yeah,” she said. There was an odd twist to her voice at the end of the word. “Yeah. That’ll work.”

 

 

XXX

 

 

“No,” said Adrian, even though Rory hadn’t even finished his sentence. “No, I’m staying in Leadworth.” He didn’t say it harshly, or meanly, or indignantly. He just stated it; it was fact in his eyes, just one that he had to educate Rory on. Just as tedious as explaining what to Rory what he had missed in history class when he had been out sick.

 

Rory took a moment to feel surprised that he hadn’t seen this coming. He was curled in bed with his cell phone. Seeing now that it wasn’t going to be a short conversation, he pulled it away from his ear and put it on speaker. He placed it on his pillow, beside his head. “What’s there to keep you here?” he said, telling himself it was stupid and not worth it to feel hurt.

 

“Everything,” said Adrian. Rory heard the unspoken hopes of seven-year-old Adrian, still waiting for the Doctor to fly back in his blue box and whisk Adrian off to adventures on the moon, and mars, and planets that the humans didn’t have names for. And somehow, Rory knew that he couldn’t argue with Adrian about this.

 

So he didn’t try.

 

“I’ve heard a lot of different things about long distance relationships,” Rory said instead. “Some good stuff, but mainly bad stuff. But we’ll make it work. I promise.”

 

“…how far away will you be?” Adrian asked softly.

 

“I’ve chosen Cammbale Uni,” said Rory. “It’s an hour away by train. Bit over two by car. Dad and I went to the campus last weekend, and that’s what sealed the deal. It’s beautiful—all green, and big leafy trees that I bet you will change color in the fall.” They were both silent for a few breaths. “You’ll have to come visit me in the fall,” said Rory. “And every other time of the year.”

 

Adrian didn’t respond immediately. “Yeah,” he said. “Of course. Me and Mels will be up there so often you’ll get sick of us.”

 

Rory smiled, to convince himself that this was a compromise that would work, and work well, but he still wasn’t able to feel completely happy with this promise. It seemed lacking. “That’s exactly what I’m hoping for.”

 

 

XXX

 

 

There was something different about this summer, this final summer, which Adrian didn’t like. Perhaps it was merely that, simply, it was the _final_ summer. That itself had a horribly metallic taste in Adrian’s mouth, and didn’t lend to this summer the normal sense of freedom. Rather, it lent it a sense of impending doom.

 

Yes—that it was the _final_ summer was exactly what made it different.

 

Oh, they still went to the pool. They still spent lazy days with Mels at the park, or Adrian’s house, or Rory’s. But there was no overhanging summer assignments to do. Instead there was packing, on Rory’s part, for uni—and, surprisingly, on Mels’s part as well.

 

“I’m going to travel,” she said one day near the middle of summer. The days had begun to blend together by then, meshing in their memories into one long day of sunshine and lazing about and a crap television and good books.

 

“Where?” Adrian had asked.

 

“Anywhere,” Mels had replied.

 

Outwardly, Adrian had encouraged her. Inwardly, he thought about how both she and Rory knew what they were going to do with their lives while he was still drifting.

 

 

XXX

 

 

 

Mels had said her goodbyes the week before, and driven off in a bright red car that both Adrian and Rory neglected to question her about. Her first stop, she had said, was London, because everything exciting happened in London. She told them with a wink that she planned to stay there through Christmas, just in case the aliens thought that it would, once more, make an excellent target for their festive shenanigans.

 

Now, a week later, Adrian was seeing Rory off to university by himself. Brian was going to bring up the last of Rory’s things by car and help him settle in to his dorm the next day—so this train ride was just the two of them.

 

Adrian was set on not letting the last hour they had together before Rory’s term began not go to waste. He threw himself into the conversation that Rory started once the train ride was underway, and listened to him talk happily about the future and the past—all the ‘remember when’s—and Adrian did his best to ignore the slowly sinking stone in his gut.

 

To Adrian, it felt as though it had only been ten minutes and not an entire hour when the train pulled into the station.

 

Suddenly, they were silent as the man on the intercom announced the stop.

 

“That’s me,” said Rory, giving a grin. “Last chance—you can come with me.” He knew it wasn’t going to happen. But he also knew that one last attempt wouldn’t hurt.

 

“No,” said Adrian. “…no. Leadworth is where I’m staying.”

 

“Thought so,” said Rory. He didn’t try to argue. He went about gathering his bags. Adrian wordlessly took one from him and helped him haul it off of the train.

 

They made their way through the unfamiliar streets to a bus stop.

 

“Will you come up and visit this weekend? Help me settle in?” Rory asked as they waited.

 

“Yeah,” said Adrian, “If I don’t have work.

 

“And every other weekend you can,”

 

“And you’ll come back to Leadworth. It’s not that far.”

 

“It’s really not.”

 

“No.”

 

“An hour isn’t much.”

 

“Compared to two hours, or three. Or more.”

 

“Or a day.”

 

“Or a week.”

 

They both gave weak, unconvincing breaths of laughter.

 

A stranger walked over and sat on the far side of the bench from them. Adrian glanced down the road and saw the bus coming down the street.

 

“There’s your bus,” Adrian nodded to it. Rory stood up and began gathering his bas. Adrian stood as well. Mainly, he was feeling awkward and strangely empty, like this was something huge and final, that there was no coming back from this.

 

(He knew that wasn’t true. Still.)

 

Rory was either feeling the same dark foreboding, or could sense that it was sinking into Adrian, and he dropped the bag he had been pulling onto his shoulder. “Hey,” he said, stepping closer to Adrian. Adrian glanced away, and then back to Adrian, quickly. Rory, on an impulse—instead of continuing his sentence—leaned in and kissed him, just for a moment, and then pulled away; but Adrian followed him forward and continued the kiss, deepening it.

 

Rory  noticed, at the back of his mind, that this was their first public kiss (and he nearly felt that deserved capitals—Their First Public Kiss). He also noticed vaguely that the bus had pulled up to the curb and had opened its doors; people were walking out, all around them, and Rory pulled back again, blushing when a stranger whistled at them.

 

“Hey,” Adrian echoed Rory’s earlier word.

 

“Hey,” Rory grinned. “See you this weekend, right?”

 

“Of course,” said Adrian.

 

 

XXX

 

 

 

**Nineteen**

Motion is relative. This is a simple concept, really—maybe not at first, but once you understand it, it’s really very simple. Adrian felt that the concept of relative motion could be applied to time as well. For example: in Leadworth, the days dragged by into slow weeks into excoriating months, occasionally punctuated by visits to or from Rory, or texting sessions and post cards from Mels. Social interaction with Aunt Sharon was tedious, and Adrian felt untethered. Drifting.

 

An hour away, at university, time was moving at the speed of light. Required classes and extracurricular activities and new friends and classmates, all jammed into days that lasted hardly longer than a few breaths, and nights that were even shorter, and weeks and months that were moving by at supersonic speeds.

  
So, the motion of time is relative. And Adrian desperately needed something new in his life, something to break up the sluggish monotony of it all. Somehow, he convinced himself that a break from Rory would do the trick—Adrian would be able to go out and meet new people, and so would Rory, and then at the end of it they’d still have each other. And, somehow, Adrian convinced himself that was exactly the way it was going to be.

 

Rory wasn’t as happy with the idea.

 

“What’s wrong with what we have now?” he asked, phone balanced between his ear and shoulder as he tried to figure out the room key while still keeping ahold of his lunch and his book bag.

 

“Nothing,” said Adrian, “Nothing at all.”

 

Rory got the door open, and went in, and didn’t pay attention to the fact that his roommate was still getting up, toothbrush in his mouth and hair in disarray. “So why do you want a break?” asked Rory, dropping his bag on his bed. It made a soft noise that was less than satisfying.

 

“I think it’d be good for both of us,” said Adrian, calm. Or at least sounding it. Rory took a moment to wonder how much Adrian was hiding behind that calm tone, and started to ask, but then realized that if he’d just been relegated back to _best friend_ after being used to _boyfriend_ , and that it might no longer be his place to ask. Instead, he stayed silent.

 

“But,” said Adrian, “It wouldn’t be forever, you know. It’d just be for a while. Go out and experience the world. Meet other people. And I will too. And then we’ll come back to each other.”

 

“It never happens like that in the real world,” said Rory, the words coming out thick. “You do realize I’m going to fight you on this. I’m not going to let you go that easily.”

 

“I know,” said Adrian. Carefree. Not worried in the least.

 

But Rory knew that he couldn’t deny Adrian anything, not even at his own expense. He wondered if that made him a horrible pushover. He would have liked to have said he didn’t care, but the fact was that he did, and by the time he and Adrian had hung up the phone, all that Rory was feeling was rotten and unhappy.

 

He was grateful when his roommate didn’t say anything.

 

 

XXX

 

“I got an internship at Leadworth Hospital.” Rory cleared his throat to the answering machine of Adrian’s phone. “For the summer, you know. And I’ve signed it up for credit for next year, so I’ll be…commuting, next year, next year at uni. I just thought you’d like to know. I….you said you’d be there, afterwards. Well, I went and I experienced the world and so did you and now it’s summer, and you said you’d be there after…a break. And I said I would to. So…Adrian. I….” He cleared his throat again, resolved to say it. But then he couldn’t. He didn’t. Instead, he said, lamely. “I miss you. See you in a few weeks, for summer, you know.”

 

XXX

 

 

“White male, mid –twenties, breaking and entering. Send me some back-up. I’ve got him restrained.” Adrian studied the man who was just regaining awareness, adrenaline thrilling through his veins. He had recognized him the moment he had seen him of course—nobody would be able to forget that face and those raggedy clothing. Also, the blue time machine sort of gave him away as well.

 

On the floor, the Doctor stirred and groaned softly. Adrian jumped, heart pounding, and it was a moment before he could force his mouth to work:  “Oi! Sit still. I have back-up on the way.”

 

“Cricket bat,” the Doctor said, cracking his eyes open and then squeezing them shut. “I…think that was a cricket bat.”

 

“Yes—well—you were breaking and entering,” Adrian found it fit to remind him.

 

“Well,” he said, touching his head with his hand, and then flattening the palm on his forehead. “Well! Good ‘ol knock on the head, just what I needed. New head, great big knock on it, settle everything into place. Just what it needed!”

 

Adrian was unsure of how to feel about the situation he was currently in. “Do you want to shut up now? I’ve got back-up on the way.” Maybe if he said it enough times, it would come true. Maybe Rory would show up for an unannounced Let’s Try Again lunch date, and he’d count as back-up instead.

 

“Hold on,” the Doctor squinted at him. Then, as if really seeing him for the first time, the Doctor observed what Adrian was wearing—hat, covering his spiky red hair, white shirt under a bulky black vest, and black pants (which were actually a bit on the tight side)—and he said, “You’re a policeman.”

 

“Yes,” said Adrian curtly. “And you were breaking and entering. Do you see how that works out?”

 

“But what are you doing here?” The Doctor actually looked confused. “Where’s Amelia? Well. Adrian. Where’s Adrian?”

 

Adrian swallowed. “Amelia Pond?” He sounded half strangled. The Doctor didn’t seem to notice.  

 

“Yes! Little Scottish girl. Cut her hair all off, wants to be called Adrian instead. I promised five minutes, but the engines were phasing, and I suppose I must have gone a bit farther than that.” Worried, he asked, “Has something happened?”

 

“Amelia Pond hasn’t lived here in a long time,” Adrian said, doing his best to sound as matter-of-fact as he could.

 

“How long?” He jerked once against the handcuffs and paused, and looked at it, startled.

 

Adrian paused—it had been nearly two years now since Aunt Sharon had accepted him as Adrian. “Two years,” he said.

 

“No.” the Doctor said. “No, no, no,” He was beginning to look as though someone had slapped him across that ridiculous face of his. “No, I can’t be late. I can’t be _two years_ late. I promised five minutes. Quick hop five minutes into the future, I said, just wait five minutes. I _promised_.” Something in Adrian’s expression must have changed, because the Doctor’s voice sped up a notch. “Has something happened? What happened? Is Adrian okay?”

 

Adrian turned around so that he could hide his face from the Doctor. Best to keep the act up, though. There was something distinctly not right about this, and it was causing Adrian’s stomach to flip oddly “Sarge, hurry it up. This guy knows something about Adrian Pond.”

 

The Doctor struggled against his handcuff. “Augh,” he said. He pulled against it and shook his hand about, pulling and rattling it around, attempting to dislodge it.  Adrian turned around at the commotion. “I need to speak to whoever lives in this house, right now,” said the Doctor.

 

“ _I_ live here,” said Adrian.

 

“But you’re the police,” said the Doctor, like this was genuinely confusing.

 

“Yes, and this is where I live,” said Adrian. “That’s not an extremely hard concept to grasp—”

 

“How many rooms?” the Doctor cut him off.

 

“What?”

 

“On this floor. How many rooms?”

 

“I—why?”

 

“On this floor, how many rooms on this floor. Count them for me. Please.” When Adrian responded with only an ‘ _oh really_ ’ sort of look, the Doctor said, “Do it, please, because it will change your life.”

 

Oh, and did it _ever._

 

 

XXX

 

 

“But—” said Rory. “It’s him, though, the Doctor, the Raggedy Doctor.”

 

“Yes,” said Adrian.

 

“But he’s—he’s a story, a game, he’s _imaginary_ , Adrian.”

 

“He came back.”

 

Oh, yes, the dog that ran away last week came home. Oh, yes, the boy who came into the bakery last month to buy some bread for his grandmother came back today and bought the same kind of bread for the same grandmother. Right, the boomerang that you threw at my head missed and came back and hit yours.

 

Casual.

 

Adrian felt anything _but_.

 

“But—” Rory started. The Doctor grabbed his shirt.

 

“Man, dog, camera phone. Why were you taking pictures of a man and a dog while the sun is going funny?”

 

“Because he can’t be there,” said Rory. Things went a bit to hell from there.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Rory raced after Adrian, and the both of them raced after the Doctor—but they were too late by the time that they rounded the corner into Adrian’s front garden: the TARDIS was already whooshing out of existence, its engines fazing and whirring and groaning in a way that Rory couldn’t possibly describe.

 

In front of him, Adrian had his eyes closed, heaving out a heavy breath through his nose with his entire body. His hands were fists.

 

“Adrian?” He asked softly, reaching out to touch Adrian’s closed hand.

 

“He left again,” Adrian said softly, turning to him. “The Doctor left again—I should have known that he wasn’t going to stay. He didn’t stay before. He’s just like everyone else in this damn world—everyone leaves.” His eyes accused Rory, too.

 

Rory shook his head. “I’m not leaving, Adrian.”

 

“You did, though. You went away to university.”

 

“I wasn’t that far away,” Rory said, feeling as though he had to defend himself. “Only, like, an hour. And I’m back now.”

 

Adrian looked away from him, fixed his eyes on the ground. Rory slipped his fingers between Adrian’s, and brought Adrian’s hand to his lips.

 

“I won’t leave again,” he said. He touched the side of Adrian’s face with his free hand, and Adrian’s eyes moved back to Rory’s. “Look at me—I promise. Okay?”

 

“Alright,” said Adrian softly. Rory leaned in and kissed him.

 

“Good,” said Rory.

 

 

XXX

 

**Twenty**

 

Adrian looked down at the ring that Rory had just nervously, fumbling, presented to him, nestled in its little red velvet box. It looked all innocent there, and not at all life changing.

 

Such a simple ring, too—not like those huge diamonds seen on television, those rings that make a statement. This was a band of silver, with three tiny sparkling stars of even tinier diamonds set into the silver, and two raised golden ones alternating between them.

 

 _Don’t say something stupid_ , Adrian thought, without know exactly what would be stupid to say.

 

He glanced at the ground, the green grass beneath their feet, and at the trees and then to the sky. It was late evening. There were a couple of stars out, shining dimly though the fug of city lights.

 

 _Don’t say something stupid!_ He said to himself. _But say something!_

 

Adrian looked Rory right in the eyes.

 

“Idiot,” he said. Shit, that was stupid; Rory’s face closed off, shutting down immediately. “No,” said Adrian. Fuck, that was worse. He grabbed Rory’s wrists. “As in—not like that. Of course. Yes. I’ll marry you. I said no as in—you’re not an idiot for asking, that’s not what I was saying, I was saying—” But even Adrian wasn’t sure what he had been saying, and wasn’t sure what else was going to come out of his mouth, so he was immensely relieved when Rory grinned and kissed him instead of letting him continue.

 

Adrian took the moment to compose himself.

 

“I love you,” he said, his voice worryingly thick, “so give me that damn perfect ring already.”

 

XXX

 

 

**Twenty One**

 

It was nice out. Oddly, that was the thing that Adrian noticed the moment he walked—well, okay, not so much walked as _ran_ —out of the front door. Really. It was one of those dry nights when there was a slight breeze, carrying in a bit of a chill to cancel out the fact that it was just about springtime and the nights were, slowly but surely, getting warmer.

 

He flung open the door to the gate. He felt oddly calm, mentally, but physically, his heart was pounding with adrenaline and something else that might have been labeled _anticipation_. It had nothing to do with the nice crisp chill in the air that penetrated right through his sleep shirt (which was actually one of Rory’s, in Adrian’s possession since long ago) and his binder and his too-short silly polkadot pajama pants and right into the first and second layers of his skin.

 

“Doctor,” Adrian breathed. The alien was leaning against his police box, one arm folded across his chest and the other hand twirling his screwdriver in a surprisingly nimble way. Adrian pulled to a full stop a few yards away, and swallowed, twice. He coughed. It was a fake cough. “I didn’t expect you to come back.”

 

“Course I came back. I always came back. Is there something wrong with that?” The Doctor sounded as though he thought it was rather silly to think that there was a problem with that.

 

“No, nope, not at all,” said Adrian, feeling that odd calmness in his arms and in his legs. “Not at all.”

 

“Good,” said the Doctor.

 

“You’re from another planet.” Adrian felt the need to clarify.

 

“Yeah.” The Doctor tossed his screwdriver into the air. It rose, end over end, and then fell the same way, right back into his hand.

 

“Okay.” He took a breath.

 

“So what do you think?” asked the Doctor.

 

“Of what?”

 

“Other planets,” said the Doctor like it was a secret he was just bursting to tell. “What to check some out?”

 

“What does that even mean?” He thought of Rory. He thought of commitments. He thought of people leaving, and then he thought of leaving himself.

 

“Well, it means ‘come with me’.”

 

And Adrian’s heart leaped into his mouth—it was as though the Doctor had just read his thoughts. Adrian almost said _I can’t;_ what he actually said was, “Where?”

 

“Anywhere. Everywhere. Where ever you like.”

 

But the Doctor had left—he had left twice. “All that stuff…” Adrian shook his head. “That wonderful, amazing stuff with Prisoner Zero. The hospital, the spaceships.”

 

“Oh, that’s just the beginning,” said the Doctor. “There are loads more out there.”

 

“That was _two years_ ago,”

 

And just that fact made Adrian feel like _punching_ the Doctor, hard enough to make tiny yellow birds dance in circles over his head.

 

“Oops,” said the Doctor. But this wasn’t spilled milk. “So that’s….”

 

“Fourteen years,” said Adrian.

 

“Fourteen years,” the Doctor repeated, then, “since fish custard. Adrian Pond—the one who waited. You’ve waited long enough, Adrian.”

 

“No,” said Adrian. Tomorrow was—tomorrow was important. “I waited, but I stopped. Stopped waiting.”

 

“You wanted to come fourteen years ago,”

 

“And then I grew up,” Adrian closed his eyes. Yeah, he had done a lot of growing up.

 

“Don’t worry. I’ll soon fix that.” The Doctor grinned and swayed as though he might be about to start dancing, and then snapped his fingers. The door of the TARDIS swung open and Adrian’s head snapped around to see.

 

“Go on,” said the Doctor and Adrian didn’t need to be told twice.

 

He had always wondered what exactly the inside of the Doctor’s blue time machine looked like, and everything he had imagined—well, nothing had been like this. The Doctor followed him in, shutting the door behind them, and then skipping around of and in front of Adrian to the main central controls.

 

Adrian stood where he was and took it all in—the metal and glass, the stairs and doorways and wires, tubes, other things that he didn’t know the names of; valves and pipes and levers and button and dials.

 

“Well, Adrian? Any….passing remarks?” the Doctor asked, giddy and full of confidence. “Because I’ve heard them all.”

 

Adrian shook his head. He looked down at himself. Too short pajama pants with ridiculous pink polkadots (long since faded into a shade much closer to white) and slippers. “I’m in my bunny slippers,” he said. They had been a joke gift from Mels.

 

“Oh, no worries!” the Doctor laughed. “There’s a whole wardrobe. Fashions from every century in there. You’ll find something you like. Oh—and possibly a swimming pool in there too,”

 

“I thought the pool was in library,” said Adrian. He stepped forward and studied the control consol. There was more buttons and dials and levers and spinny-things and other mechanisms than he could possibly come up with names or functions for.

 

“It was. Don’t know where it’s gotten to now, though. Could be anywhere.”

 

Adrian realized, then— “You’re so sure I’m coming with you.”

 

“Lived here all those year, most of your life—and you’ve still got that accent,” the Doctor pointed at him. “Yeah, you’re coming.”

 

Well, it wouldn’t do any harm if… “Could you get me back in time for tomorrow?”

 

“Why, what’s tomorrow?”

 

“Nothing. Just—stuff.”

 

“It’s a time machine, Adrian. I could get you back to five minutes ago. Right! So back in time for tomorrow for _stuff_.” He pushed a lever, pulled another, bopped a few buttons and rang a little bell. Then, he turned his face to Adrian, alight with the kind of genuine grin that made people’s hearts go a little bit soft. It was the sort of grin that a two year baby with hardly any teeth gave to strangers sitting near him on the airplane, the one that made the strangers coo and giggle. It was an odd grin to see on a grown man. “Where to first?”

 

 

XXX

 

 

They were, not for the first time, soaked through to the bone, and—much to Adrian’s disappointment—right back in the TARDIS after having been on boring old Earth. Granted, they had just seen dinosaurs (which had been _brilliant_ ) but they had also been dropped into a freezing lake and had not yet visited any planets besides earth. Both of which were _not_ at all, in the least, not even a tiny bit _brilliant_.

 

“Come _on_ , Doctor. You promised me a planet, and so far, the closest we’ve been to a different planet is on a spaceship, and even that wasn’t all that planet-y, because it was basically still full of humans and Earth things.”

 

“Oh, whine away! Stop whining.” said the Doctor. “Next, we’ll go to a planet. Alright? How about….” He clacked away at the typewriter in the consol. “Ah –ha! We’ll had on over to Corxain, in the Haneed constellation. Nearly twenty light years from Earth.” He dinged the little bell that hung down above the consol. Adrian always wondered what it was for but never seemed to get a chance to ask just what, precisely, it did. “They have wonderful gelatin on Corxain. Well. I _say_ gelatin. It’s not really gelatin. It’s not actually even edible to some species. But no worries, it’s fine for humans. And it’s not all over on Corxain. It’s just this one chef who makes his famous gelatin—and he never travels. So it’s only in this one providence on Corxain, and you need reservations. So we’ll go make some reservations and then hop a few months ahead so we don’t actually have to wait.” He poked Adrian in the shoulder. “Go get on some dry clothes—dress for fog.”

 

“How exactly does one dress for fog?” Adrian asked. “With a gas mask?”

 

“Oh, no, no need for gas masks. It’s not toxic fog. Well, I _say_ non-toxic…”

 

“Alright, Mister _well I say_ ,” said Adrian imitated his tone. “I get the picture.”

 

“Sorry,” said the Doctor. “That was a bit of a habit. Carried over from my past regeneration, I think, but it wasn’t something that I used to do constantly, only sometimes, and now it’s made a sudden comeback. I’ll try to stop.”

 

“Regeneration?” Adrian raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

 

“Weren’t you going to get dressed for Corxain?” the Doctor asked. Adrian could tell he was trying to skirt around the topic.

 

“What did you mean by _regeneration_?” Adrian asked again.

 

The Doctor looked at him for a long moment, and then said, “I don’t die. When I’m about to die, I regenerate.”

 

“So you’ve—what, regenerated how many times?”

 

The Doctor looked at the controls on the console instead of at Adrian, and then up at him and down again. “When you first met me, I’d just regenerated. This is my eleventh body.” He held up his own hand and studied it for a moment. “Enough of that! Go get changed for Corxain. Fog. Goggles! Fog goggles. They’ll be…somewhere. Check the drawers of that vanity from Everoh.”

 

And because the Doctor had told him what he had been asking to hear, Adrian went. (And because there were no gas masks, anyway, Adrian wore a set of fog goggles and a scarf that he pulled over his nose and mouth to filter the fog, because, well. You can never be too careful.)

 

 

XXX

 

 

Sitting on that log in the middle of a forest of mechanical trees on a spaceship, which was sitting on top of a cavern filled with decaying Weeping Angels, and listening to the men who were supposed to be protecting him disappear, one after the other, and forget the ones before them—it made Adrian think. Mainly, it made him think about life and forgetting those around you. It made him think about Aunt Sharon and Rory and Mels, but especially about Rory and about commitments and the reason he was here in this situation and dying in the first place. Really, it went back to Rory and commitments—because, Adrian realized, he didn’t want a commitment. He wanted Rory, yes, definitely—but he didn’t want the commitment of marriage, or at least wasn’t exactly prepared for it. Wasn’t that why he had left with the Doctor?

 

Yeah. Yeah, it was.

 

More than likely, it had been nagging at the back of his head the entire time; maybe, the worry of it had been there since they got engaged, or since they started dating, even, because. Well. Adrian had never been good at commitments if they got drawn out too long.

 

Rory would leave one day—Adrian knew it. He’d even had the experience of it as proof. It was a fact. It would happen again, whether he wanted it to or not, and whether Rory wanted to or not. Things would change, things would happen, stuff would tear them apart. And, although it was a little bit morbid….people die. Death was going to claim them. That would certainly be classified _leaving_.

 

(Adrian got the oddest feeling that Rory would die before him, and then brushed it off, because he was being silly. After all, he had an Angel in his head, and if he opened his eyes, he would die, so yes. Adrian’s death was a bit more immediate that Rory’s.)

 

And Adrian knew that he would be absolutely torn apart should Rory leave—when _he will_ leave, so. No. Marriage was not the thing. It would no more keep them together than glue or tape would. It would only make it hurt more.

 

By, god. Adrian didn’t want to die without Rory, either, and if marriage was the way to ensure that Rory wasn’t going to leave…well. Maybe he had been thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe signing a paper, in Rory’s mind, would really be more effective then glue.

 

And, with that hopeful thought at the front of his mind, Adrian decided that he was not going to die here, in this mechanical forest of nonliving trees and Angels that had nothing to do with God.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“Strike!” yelled Geoff as Rory’s bowling ball hit the last pin and toppled it. Rory threw his arms in the air and let out a loud whoop. Several others cheered. Rory was now winning, which was only fitting, since it _was_ the day before his wedding. Well. Civil partnership, but it was nearly the same. Adrian had gotten both his name and gender legally changed, so yeah, it was technically a civil partnership.

 

A few more turns of bowling and then the cake would be brought out. (The cake with a stripper inside would mainly be for his friend’s benefit. Not like Rory would have a male stripper who he might possibly be attracted  to at his bachelor’s party—mainly because Adrian would throw a fit—but there was no harm in entertaining his mates.)

 

Which is why it was a complete surprise when the head and shoulders that emerged from the oversized cake were not female. Actually, what was even more shocking was that the male who popped out of the cake was The Doctor.

 

The Doctor stared at the far wall, the back of his head to Rory and Rory’s mates, but Rory recognized him anyway. He didn’t manage to make any noise, though. He had the idea to, and he opened his mouth to, but somehow the idea never translated to a command and so his mouth never did anything about it. The Doctor’s head swiveled as he looked about, and then he turned fully around and his eyes landed on Rory.

 

“Rory!” he said, unflappable grin in place. “I need to talk to you.”

 

“What are you doing here?” Rory asked.

 

“I have something to tell you,” the Doctor said again. “Well.” He stood up and clambered out of the cake. It fell over. He ignored that. “Not tell, not something to tell. It’s something to talk about. Discuss. It’s about your fiancé.”

 

“What about Adrian?” Rory said. He glanced around at his mates. They were all looking at him or at the Doctor in varying stages of confusion, curiosity or annoyance or amusement. “Can we talk about this somewhere more private?”

 

“Yes, right, that is a good idea,” said the Doctor, pointing grandly and Rory. Then, in a lower voice, he said, “There’s a lovely girl outside in a bikini. Lucy, I believe. Someone should lend her a coat. Or a jumper, or, well. Some clothes.” He swept over to Rory (or seemed to sweep) and said, “Sorry, I’m taking him with me. He’ll be back in time for tomorrow. For _stuff_. Come along!” and pulled him out of the bowling alley, into the cold.

 

“What is—” Rory tried to protest. “Doctor, what.”

 

The Doctor released his arm. “Adrian tried to kiss me,” he said. “Well, he more than tried. He succeeded, but don’t worry, I quickly ended it. You’re very lucky, Rory. Adrian is a fantastic kisser.”

 

“Hang on,” said Rory, shaking his head and looking at the Doctor with narrowed eyes. “It’s been over two years since we’ve seen you, and you just show back up, like—like no time passed at all? That’s just not—”

 

“Time traveler, remember?” he grinned. “Come, the TARDIS is over here.”

 

Rory watched him go for a moment, and then sighed, and then stalled, and then followed him to the TARDIS, because well—what choice did he have? Adrian didn’t go around attempting to snog every bloke he saw, and unless the Doctor was making things up (which was a very valid possibility because Rory did not know the Doctor at all and this could very well be his idea of a great prank) Rory felt that he ought to give this new situation real consideration.

 

So he followed the Doctor through the doors of the time machine; Rory took a moment to look around at the inside of the larger on the inside time machine, but did not get long.

 

“Doctor—” said Adrian around the side of the console, stepping around it, and then cutting off. After a second of silence, and a staring match between him and Rory, he said, “Oh, hullo, Rory.”

 

“Hullo Adrian,” said Rory, surprised at how calm he felt, considering the next thing that he said was, “The Doctor said you snogged him.”

 

“About that,” the Doctor invaded the conversation before Adrian could attempt to defend himself (which he had been about to, mouth open, eyes narrowing, eyebrows pushing them down), “The thing is, out there, everything out there—it’s dazzling! But it blinds. I’ve seen it tear apart so many, because, to see all that, to be out there, and then to go _back…?_ So that’s why I’m taking the two of you on a trip—just the two of you. Someplace special. Anywhere you like.”

 

“What, like a _date_?” said Adrian. He scoffed a little bit.

 

“Do you not want to go on a date?” Rory asked, afraid that the answer would be yes. As in, yes, Adrian did _not_ want to. (Too many negatives to keep track of, but there you have it.)

 

“Yes! Exactly. Exactly like one of those. A date.” The Doctor did a small spin on the toes of one foot. He flicked several switched, pressed a button, rotated a dial, spun a small spherical device set into the glass paneling of the console. “Anyplace particular you want to go? Someplace amazing, someplace romantic?” He looked at them from around the center column. “No two cents? I’ll choose, then.”

 

Adrian stepped over to Rory, who had not moved from in front of the doors. He took Rory’s arm, linked it in his own, and grabbed onto the railing. Rory took his cue and gripped the railing as well.

 

“You might need to hold on,” said Adrian unnecessarily to Rory.

 

“Flight never used to be so bumpy,” said the Doctor of the sound of the whirring and grinding and wooshing of the TARDIS preparing for departure. “Really! It used to be much smoother. Sometimes. Not always.”

 

“It’s always bumpy,” Adrian contradicted him.

 

Something had been nagging Rory since the Doctor had reappeared. “How long has this gone on?” he asked, voice low.

 

“How long has what gone on?”

 

“Oh, don’t pretend to be all innocent,” Rory did his best not to look extremely injured by Adrian’s actions and words, because, actually, he was starting to get mad.. “This. You traveling with the Doctor. Have you been sneaking about, doing this, all year? Two years?”

 

“No!” said Adrian. “Just…well, technically, just tonight.”

 

“You seem awfully well versed in it for just it being tonight,” said Rory. He unlinked his arm from Adrian’s just as the TARDIS lurched; he flailed and swung his arm high over his head to slap his palm back onto the railing and curl his fingers around it. Adrian attempted to restrain himself, but still laughed a little bit. “…Technically?” Rory said. “What did you mean? _Technically_.”

 

“For me, it’s been…a week, tops,” said Adrian. “Well. Week and a half, tops. It’s a bit confusing. And relative.”

 

Rory clenched and unclenched his jaw. “And, in that week—did you miss me?”

 

The TARDIS bumped to a halt. “Hah!” said the Doctor, nearly crashing into Adrian as he barreled down the ramp. He flung open the doors of the TARDIS. “Venice! Brilliant. Venice, Italy. Fifteen eighty. Very beautiful—the City of Water, the City of Bridges, the Floating City, you name it! ” He went off on a monologue, then off onto a tangent, and onto another, and all that Rory and Adrian could do was follow.

 

“I thought he said he was dropping us off alone,” Rory said to Adrian as the Doctor darted around a woman carrying a goat tenderly, as though it were her child.

 

Adrian shrugged at him. “He might have….forgotten,” said Adrian.

 

“Forgotten? But that was two minutes ago.”

 

“Yeahhh,” said Adrian, putting a hand on the back of his head. “Nobody’s perfect, I suppose. In the end.”

 

 

XXX

 

 

“We need someone on the inside,” said Guido, “who can get that trap door open. If we can get it open and get through, we can get my Isabella out.”

 

“How will we get someone inside?” asked Rory, leaning on the table or Guido’s dining area. “They won’t exactly let us saunter in. Hi, come on in, we’d love to let you infiltrate our school so you can rescue your daughter from whatever it is we’re plotting to do to her that will ultimately end in her demise,” he mocked, complete with grand hand gestures. Despite the seriousness of the conversation, the fact was that this suggestion was rather silly. Adrian laughed and then tried to smother his laugh with the back of his hand.

 

“If they thought they were accepting a new student into their school…” the Doctor was thinking aloud. “They’d allow her as much access to the grounds as they allow the rest of the girls.” He looked up at Rory.

 

“Ohhhh, no,” said Rory. “I am not dressing up as a girl. I’m gay, not a cross –dresser.”

 

“We need _someone_ to do it,” said Guido.

 

Adrian studied Rory for a moment. Rory felt his eyes and turned to meet them; Adrian gave a weak smile. “I’ll do it,” he said, swiveling his head to face the Doctor.

 

“Really?” the Doctor asked. “Because I know that’s not—”

 

“No, I’ll do it.” Adrian sounded more confident this time. “I want to help in any way that I can.”

 

The Doctor studied his face, looking for signs of—of, Rory didn’t know what, signs of him going to regret this decision later, perhaps. And, not finding anything out of the ordinary—apparently—the Doctor said, “Brilliant! I have some period clothing in the TARDIS. We’ll get you sorted out.”

 

As the Doctor and Guido went back to finalizing plans, and studying the map that Guido had drawn up, Rory stepped next to Adrian, who was standing beside the window. He was fixing his scarf idly and staring out at the street, and farther down it, the market where they and the Doctor had left the TARDIS.

 

“You don’t have to—” Rory started.

 

“I’m going to,” Adrian interrupted. “And you’ll respect that decision.” He looked at Rory, and Rory suddenly felt as though he’d missed something big—some big part of Adrian’s life. God. How much had he changed, being in the Doctor’s presence for a week or two weeks? It was like Rory had just woken from a dream to find a different Adrian beside him, one who was the same in appearance and who had the same voice as the Adrian from the previous day, but who had different memories and different thoughts and different views of things.

 

So Rory touched his arm and stood, looking out the window with him and wondering if he could do anything at all to help, because he was _certain_ that part of what caused this change to come about in Adrian was pain and hurt and knowledge of things that weren’t meant for human’s eyes.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“Let me tell you how much I hate this dress,” said Adrian, tugging its collar away from his skin. “I hate it a lot. I hate it more than I hate Weeping Angels.”  

  
They were standing in the ridiculously huge wardrobe of the TARDIS, in front of three full length mirrors. Adrian was standing before them. Anybody else would have been admiring their reflection—Adrian was not. Rory wasn’t exactly, either.

 

“So you’ve said,” said Rory. “A dozen times.” What Rory had refrained from saying was just how different (and just how… _wrong_ ) Adrian looked in the dress and wig. Almost every day of his life, he had seen Adrian in too –large t –shirts or multiple layers of loose clothing, with short hair (whether it hung around his face or was cropped short and spiky). So seeing this new version was a little unsettling. Also, Rory was fairly certain that, before he had traveled with the Doctor, Adrian would never have worn a dress, even if paid by the millions.

 

“It’s just wrong,” he said, turning sideways to the mirror. “It goes against…everything. It goes against everything I identify as.”

 

Rory knew that there was no talking Adrian out of this, so he said, “It’s only for a little while.” He refrained from saying it had been Adrian’s choice to do this. “And then you can get right back into your jeans and t –shirt and go back to being regular Adrian.”

 

Adrian gave him a small grin. “One day,” he said, “I’m going to ask the Doctor about all of the alien treatments and surgeries. They’ve got to have something out there, don’t they?”

 

“Yes,” said Rory. “They’ve probably got better things than they do on Earth, out there.” And suddenly, traveling with the Doctor—well, Adrian traveling with the Doctor—didn’t seem so horrible after all.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“And now, Corxain!” The Doctor said, grinning widely at Adrian and Rory after landing the TARDIS. “Would you like to do the honors, Adrian?”

 

“Best gelatin in this side of the universe,” Adrian leaned forward, towards Rory. “ _And_ fog that’s slightly toxic to humans.” He made a face at that.

 

“Yes! Correct-o-mundo.” The Doctor seemed to hear himself, then. “I am never going to say that again.”

  
Adrian snorted. The Doctor continued.

 

“But not today! Today we’ve landed on the other side of Corxain. Fortunately, no toxic gas in this part! Unfortunately, there’s also not any gelatin.”

  
“Awww,” said Adrian. “I was hoping we could show Rory just how amazing Corxain gelatin is.”

 

“Yes, some other time—but right now, even better. Here, in this undeveloped piece of Corxain, there’s an abundance of _firebugs_!”

 

Rory raised an eyebrow. “Fireflies? Alien fireflies?”

 

“Noooo, no, no, no!” the Doctor said, words spewing out so quickly that they stuttered together. “No. Fire _bugs_. That’s the closest translation form Corxaish to Engllish. The Corxaish word is _amtyix vxteryn_. I don’t think humans can even imagine some of the syllables in Corxaish. Well, they’re sort of like fireflies, I suppose. They are rather distant relatives, after all.”

 

“Wait,” said Rory, “does that mean that fireflies are aliens?”

 

“Of course not!” The Doctor, who had been wandering toward of the door of the TARDIS with long, thoughtless strides, spun around. He looked nearly scandalized. “Not at all! Distant relatives, I said. Fireflies aren’t aliens. That’s bees.”

 

“Bees are aliens,” Rory repeated.

 

“Not all of them,” said the Doctor, idly now. He was more preoccupied with stepping outside, after all.

 

Adrian said to Rory as they followed the Doctor, “He didn’t warn me last time we came here, but there is much less gravity on Corxain than we’re used to having on earth.”

 

“Right,” said Rory. He cautiously followed Adrian out onto the spongy surface of Corxain. He was right to be cautious, for the moment they stepped outside of the TARDIS, the change was felt sharply. Rory felt his center of gravity shift, and it was sort of a lifting sensation, or like being knocked sideways. Or upwards, from below. Like jumping on a trampoline and being propelled upwards by the downwards motion, but without actually doing any jumping. He flailed his arms, which moved quicker than he expected them to, and then latched onto Adrian’s arm. Adrian had already adjusted to it, and he laughed at Rory’s actions.

 

“Shut up,” Rory said. “I’m new to this.”

 

“This was my first planet, too,” said Adrian. He laced his fingers though Rory’s. “So I know how you feel.”

 

“So you know it’s not funny!” Rory exclaimed, and then said, “and technically, that’s _second_ planet.”

 

“Earth doesn’t count,” Adrian informed him.

 

“It does,” Rory said. “It’s still a planet. It hasn’t been demoted, like Pluto.”

 

But Adrian had stopped paying attention to Rory. His eyes were focused up ahead. “Look,” he breathed, and pointed to the Doctor.

 

The Doctor had his hands out; they must have been filled with some food, because dozens of tiny lights were circling around him and landing in his cupped hands. They must have been the Firebugs mentioned earlier. They stood out, brilliant little lights, against the dark evening cycle of the Corxain wilderness.

 

The Doctor turned around and saw the pair of them, still near the TARDIS. “Don’t be shy!” he said. “They’re very friendly. Too friendly, sometimes, mind you. And they loved crushed raxari beetles! Which aren’t actually beetles like earth beetles. But they _look_ remarkably like them.”

 

When Rory and Adrian come close enough to study the Firebugs in detail, the Doctor offered them some of his crushed raxari beetles. Adrian politely declined upon discovering that the crushed beetles were oozing some internal juices and staining the Doctor’s hands a dark blue, but Rory accepted a portion them, mainly out of curiosity.

 

Adrian watched as the tiny lights flittered down and landed in Rory’s cupped hands to be fed. Shadows cast from their small, brilliant lights danced across Rory’s cheeks, nose, chin, forehead—well, his entire face and body really—and reflected off of his hair.

 

Something occurred to Adrian then. He turned to the Doctor, who had a Firebug crawling on the bridge of his nose. The Doctor was going cross –eyed attempting to watch its progress.

 

“Are these bugs harmless?” Adrian asked. “They aren’t venomous or anything, are they?”

 

“Well,” said the Doctor, “They aren’t venomous, but they do—”

 

Just then, the bug crawling on the Doctor’s nose burst into a tiny ball of flames.

 

“—that,” the Doctor finished, wincing.

 

Rory jumped. “What?” he said.

 

“Firebugs,” the Doctor replied by way of an explanation. “Ow! Owww.” He swiped at the Firebug and managed to make it fall off of his face. It plummeted for a moment, and then it extinguished itself and flew off.  “Sorry,” he said to it. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

 

There was a shiny pink burn appearing on the Doctor’s nose.

 

“I don’t think that the bug’s the one you need to worry about being hurt,” said Adrian.

 

Rory watched the Firebugs for a moment in something akin to horror, or terror, or maybe awe, and then said to Adrian, “Hold this,” which was the only warning Adrian got before Rory dumped his handful of raxari beetles into Adrian’s.

 

“I don’t—” said Adrian.

 

“You have a first aid kit in the TARDIS, yeah?” Rory cut him off to ask the Doctor.

 

“Of course,”

 

“Let me treat that burn.”

 

“Alright,” said the Doctor. They headed back to the TARDIS and Adrian stayed where he was. As they two walked, he heard the Doctor say, “Very, very, hot, Firebug fire. Extremely hot, in a matter of milliseconds. You could compare to lava, maybe. But maybe not. But Firebugs—they’re how the Corxaish discovered and learned to use fire. Theirs is different from earth fire. And, actually, the more accurate translation for _amtyix vxteryn_ is _‘ones who play with light_ ’, except their word for light also means fire, so the name is rather literal….”

 

The Firebugs continued to fly about around Adrian, having been disturbed from their feeding when Rory upended their meal into Adrian’s hands as Adrian watched the Doctor and Rory disappear into the TARDIS.

 

Adrian watched the Firebugs instead, then; they had lost some of their charm, what with that display, but not all of it. They were still beautiful, tiny insects. Well, aliens. Well, alien insects.

 

He thought of the way Rory had looked moments ago—fascinated by the Firebugs, and lit up by them—and then how he had looked, startled by the fire, and Adrian took the moment to appreciate Rory’s face. Adrian smiled to himself as several Firebugs landed on his fingers and crawled towards the beetles that were already turning his hands blue.

 

He felt something crawling by his ear, and shook his head. A Firebug took off from his temple and flew in a lazy loop in front of Adrian. One bug, sitting idle on Adrian’s left thumb, burst into flames. The heat was immediate, and it would have scorched him like it had the Doctor, but Adrian had no qualms about harming the Firebugs. He blew on it; it fell from his finger, extinguished itself, and flew back up. It landed in the same spot as it had been in before.

 

Adrian’s thoughts returned to Rory. It didn’t take a whole lot of thinking, then, for Adrian to remember that he loved Rory, and that Rory loved him back, and that they _had_ been making things work. And besides, Rory hadn’t left for nearly fourteen years already—if previous records were anything to go by, Rory wasn’t leaving any time soon.

 

Adrian told himself he had nothing to worry about.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“How did you know?” Rory asked him in a low voice, after they had woken up in the TARDIS, after they had died in both of the dream version of reality—the domestic one, the one that Rory wanted so badly for Adrian and himself. The future Adrian had gotten surgery. He was comfortable and happy…and the second version, which was so tangible, so close that Rory could taste it, that life with Adrian and the Doctor, the three of them gallivanting around the universe and having a grand old time.

 

Adrian wasn’t looking at him. Softly, Rory continued, attempting to clarify. “That it wasn’t the real world. The—the one where we had a house, and we were going to adopt.”

 

“Because—” Adrian started to say _because you died_ but stopped himself. He thought a moment longer. He still wound up saying the truth. “Because I didn’t _want it,_ I didn’t want it without you there too.”

 

 

XXX

 

 

“Are you okay?” the Doctor asked quietly. Adrian paused before answering, staring at the distance hill where he had seen himself waving from the future earlier that day, and now—again—after everything…the drill, the explosion.

 

“I thought…” Adrian trailed off. It was impossible, but just for an instant… “I thought I saw someone else there, for a moment,” he said. “But there’s nobody there but me.” Future Adrian on the hill turned and began to walk away, so Adrian turned as well, back to the TARDIS. He hopped over a patch of blueish grass. “Well! How about a vacation? I need a vacation. Weren’t we talking about Rio?”

 

“Yeah. We’ll go to Rio.” He smiled. Then he hesitated, just slightly, and nodded to the TARDIS. “You go ahead,” said the Doctor, taking out his sonic screwdriver and unlocking the TARDIS. “Go get packed for Rio. I’ve just got to fix this lock—keeps jamming…”

 

“Alright,” said Adrian, “I shall prepare for Rio.” He lifted his eyebrows, leaning against the door frame. “Because this time we’re actually going to Rio.”

 

Stepping inside the TARDIS, Adrian paused. The door shut behind him and he got an odd de ja –vu feeling, as though this had happened before, or something similar to it. But something was missing. The console room felt very large and empty and cold (metal and glass and wires and other bits) which was odd, because…well, there was no reason for it to feel too large and rather lonely. The Doctor was just outside, after all—

 

But Adrian couldn’t shake the feeling; it stayed all the way until Rio, and even then, it wasn’t completely forgotten, the vague feeling of loneliness.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“You got a pen?” Adrian called after the Doctor as he ran out of the console room.

 

“Make sure it’s a red pen!” he yelled back.

 

Adrian shrugged—it would be nearly impossible to find a red pen amongst all of the random odds and ends around the TARDIS. He seriously doubted that something as average and as specific as a red pen would be easy to find in the TARDIS. The expression ‘needle in a haystack’ came to mind despite being an imperfect comparison. It would be more like attempting to find a paperclip.

 

He picked up the Doctor’s jacket from where it had been thrown on the armchair-like seat near the railing, and dipped a hand first into both outer pockets, and then checked the inner ones. But he felt something odd and rather box-like in the first inner pocket, so he returned to it and pulled it out.

 

It was a small red velvet ring box. Adrian opened it with a flick of his thumb nail at the seam, and found a simple, smooth silver ring inside. There were three small stars set in, made up of tiny diamonds, and between them, two small stars of raised gold. It was a beautiful ring, but Adrian couldn’t come up with even the most outlandish and ridiculous reason as to why the Doctor would have been carrying it around. Not to mention that seeing the ring, holding the red box like that—it gave Adrian an overwhelming sense of de ja –vu. This had happened before, but Adrian had no idea when or why, or anything else.

 

He snapped the ring box shut.

 

 

XXX

 

 

Holding the torch in two hands, Adrian lit the other, which was leaning in its holder, set on the wall. He and the Doctor were _guarding_ the Pandorica, and he had taken it upon himself to adequately light the chambers they were to be waiting in while the Doctor investigated the Pandorica itself with his sonic and his small communication device, because what good would they be doing if they couldn’t see anything?

 

Adrian supposed that now seemed as good as a time as any to ask. “So,” he said, putting the torch he had been using to light the others back into its place in the wall. “Are you proposing to someone?”

  
The Doctor leaned around the corner of the Pandorica to get a look at Adrian. “What?” he asked. Adrian pulled the small red ring box from his coat pocket and held it up. An odd look crossed his face. “Where did you get that?”

 

“I found this in your pocket,” he said. “So…who’s the lucky alien?”

 

“No, nobody,” the Doctor said. Adrian walked over to him and opened the small box to look at the ring. He got the feeling that there was a thought or a word just out of his reach. “That’s a memory.”

 

“A good one?”

 

“Yes,” the Doctor said, and held out his hands as though he were just mature enough to refrain from saying _give it back_ in a petulant and whiny way. Adrian ignored the hand and the implied command. He shook his head.

 

“I don’t know, when I look at it, I feel…I feel like there’s a word,” Adrian looked up at the Doctor. “A really, very obvious, every –day sort of word that I’ve just forgotten. Something like…” he thought for a moment. “Something like _chair_ or _relax_ or _page_. Something that is really, _really_ stupid to forget.”

 

The Doctor plucked the box from Adrian’s hands, snapped it shut, and turned slightly to put it back into his inside coat pocket. He did not comment on what Adrian had said.

 

Adrian cleared his throat. “What have you found out about the Pandorica?”

 

 

XXX

 

 

“Rory, I’m sorry, you’re going to have to be very brave,” the Doctor said, his eyes fixed on something behind Rory. They stood in front of the Pandorica, and Rory—newly a Roman—didn’t have long to wonder what the Doctor meant by that and whether or not he was talking about something Pandorica related or not.

 

Apparently not:

 

“My head,” Adrian groaned, walking past Rory as though he hadn’t seen him, both elbows out and both hands in his short hair. One was rubbing slightly. Rory’s mouth opened and one hand came up, stayed awkwardly in the air—almost reaching for Adrian—and then fell back to his side.

 

“Just your basic knock-out drops,” the Doctor declared after a quick (and not at all medically accurate, if Rory said so himself) exam. “Get some fresh air, you’ll be fine.” He picked up one end of Adrian’s dark blue scarf and wound it around Adrian’s neck. “And keep warm. Nasty side-effect of those darned things—you’re likely to get a chill.”

 

Adrian turned away and nearly walked into Rory. “Oh,” he said. “Hullo.”

 

“Hullo,” Rory said.

 

“You’re the guy with the sword, eh?  Who did the, the swording.” He imitated said swording with circular hand movements and a jab with an imaginary sword. “Nice swording.” He patted Rory on the shoulder twice and walked off towards the steps leading outside, seeming to be slightly woozy still, if his staggering steps were anything to go by.

 

“Yeah,” said Rory, after he had gone, and then said to the Doctor, not wanting to believe what had happened. But he’d been turned into a Roman and the impossible was no longer impossible, no matter how much he desperately wished for it still to be so. “He doesn’t remember me. How could he not remember me?”

 

The Doctor shook his head. “You never existed, Rory. You were erased.”

 

Rory threw his hands out to the side. “Yeah, that’s good to hear! Erased. Like I was just a doodle. On a test paper or something. And what, that’s an everyday occurrence, is it? Being erased and then forgotten by someone you’ve known almost your whole life and turning into a Roman. Totally average for you, is it?”

 

“No,” the Doctor said. If Rory didn’t know better, he would have said that the Doctor looked slightly offended by what he had just said. “Listen: you were erased, but traces remained.” He pulled the ring box out of his coat. A grin started on his face, and he pressed it to Rory’s metal chest plate, right over his heart.

 

Rory reached up and took the tiny box. The Doctor clapped his hands on Rory’s shoulders, giving him a very slight shake.  

 

“Go get him!” said the Doctor. Rory looked at the box for a moment, held it up, and opened it. He shook his head at the ring and snapped the box shut again.

 

“But—Doctor,” Rory said. “I don’t get why I’m here. I woke up, head full of Roman…. _stuff_. I thought it was all a dream—Leadworth and Adrian and you. But then they were talking about visitors. The man with the red hair—I thought Adrian and you had come back for me.” He held up the ring box. It was clenched in his fingers, and he felt ready to throw it down. But he restrained himself and jerkily brought his arm back down. “But Adrian can’t even _remember_ me,” his voice broke.

 

The Doctor stepped closer to Rory. “Sometimes, impossible things just happen, Rory. And they’re never explained and they should never have happened but they do, and we call them _miracles_.” The Doctor put his hand on Rory’s shoulder. “Nine hundred years of time and space, and I’ve never seen one. But this would do me.” He gave Rory’s shoulder a small shove. Rory was feeling rather manhandled by this point. “Now go and get him! He’s Adrian and he’s surrounded by Romans. I don’t know if history can take it.”

 

“Right, yeah,” said Rory. He gave a mock salute with the ring box head out, up the stairs to the middle of Stonehenge

 

 

XXX

 

 

Adrian had been given a blanket and was sitting on a large, flat stone, twisted around to watch the Romans as they stood around their small fires and chatted since they didn’t have much else to do.

 

Rory sat down beside him. “How are you?”

“Did the Doctor send you?” Adrian looked at him.

 

“No!”

 

“He just fusses,” Adrian said. He stuck his hands between his knees in an attempt to keep them warm. There was a long moment of silence.

 

“You’ve got a blanket,” he said, and felt rather silly for pointing out the obvious after saying it.

 

“Yeah,” said Adrian. He turned to Rory.

 

“Who gave that to you?”

 

“Just one of the blokes.” Adrian turned to watch them again. Rory mirrored his movement.

 

“Which one?”

 

“Just one of them. Does it matter?”

 

“I suppose not,” said Rory. He turned around forward again and studied his hands, where the ring box was hidden under his fingers.

 

“S just a blanket,” mumbled Adrian. He pulled it tighter around his shoulders. He was definitely starting to feel the chill, the side-effect of those so called knock-out drops. Feeling as though he owed it to this Roman who saved his life to make conversation, Adrian said, “So. What’s your name?”

 

Rory looked at him for a moment, a pained expression on his face. Rory know that first meetings were always hard to remember—he could hardly remember the first time he had met Adrian; there was just a Before Rory Knew Adrian and When Rory Knew Adrian. But Rory had a feeling that he was not going to have a hard time remembering this introduction.

 

“Rory,” Rory said eventually. Adrian laughed. “What?”

  
“Just not what you’d expect a Roman to be called, Rory,” said Adrian. “Hah. What’s it short for? Ror…Roranicus? Rorebolous? Roriexen? I don’t even know what actual Roman names are—never mind.”

 

Rory nodded, or sort of nodded, because the motion was partially aborted. “Yeah, no,” he said. “Roranicus.”

 

He studied the grass instead of his hands or Adrian, despite the last one being what he really wanted to do the most. When he looked back at Adrian, he was staring silently ahead, and there were tears running down his cheeks.

 

“You’re crying,” Rory told him, startled, because Adrian had no reason whatsoever to cry.

 

Adrian lifted a hand and touched one cheek. Finding it damp with tear tracks, he touched the other as well with the same results. He used the palm of his hand to dry his cheeks.

 

“It’s like…” He looked at his wet fingertips and the palm of his hand, where his fingerless gloves were damp. “…like I’m happy.” He knew he was grinning then, but was powerless to stop himself. A delirious laugh escaped his mouth and he clapped his hands over it to stop the laughter.

 

Rory was staring at him.

 

“Why am I so happy?” Adrian asked, dragging his fingers down, over his chin, and not expecting an answer.

 

“B-because it’s _me_!” Rory found his voice. “It’s me, Adrian, you know me!”

 

“No, I don’t,” said Adrian, shaking his head. “I don’t, though.” But he still had that bubbling feeling welling up inside his chest and those fluttery little butterflies in his stomach.

 

“You _do_ ,” Rory told him. His mind spun as he tried to think of ways to convince Adrian or to make him remember. The latter was the more desirable result—all those memories of shared class and shared breath wouldn’t be easily replaced, after all.

 

Behind them, there was a clatter as weapons were dropped to the ground: down went swords and down went shields, and Rory choked as the other Romans were powered off. The only one who realized what was happening—or that anything was happening at all—was Rory, whose arms and legs jerked for a moment, and his brow creased in momentary confusion. And then his chin dropped to his chest, just as the others had.

 

“—what?” said Adrian. There was a sort of soft mechanical whirring as Rory’s head lifted. His body was rigid and his face was blank, but that changed quickly; his face contorted with an expression like pain.

 

“I—I’m Rory,” he said. Adrian couldn’t tell if he was attempting to continue their previous conversation or if he was telling himself that he wasn’t a—a what? A machine? A robot? If he was a robot, how could he have not known he was a robot? Adrian stood; _fight or flight_ instincts were warring in him, conflicting with his desire to help the Roman and his previous delirious happiness.

 

Rory doubled over, hands wrapping around his middle. The red ring box fell to the ground; Adrian did not notice, and neither did Rory. Rory was too busy groaning and attempting to regain himself—personality, memories—and Adrian was occupied with watching, and attempting to remember that something that had been on the tip of his tongue.

 

“Adrian!” Rory gasped out. “I’m a thing! I’ll kill you—you have to run. You have to _run_.”

 

Adrian shook his head. “No, you’re not,” he said, slowly. The word—the missing one—came to him. “You’re Rory,”

 

“I’m Rory,” repeated Rory. “But I’ll kill you! _Go_!”

 

“Rory Williams,” said Adrian, the rest of the name occurring to him and fitting the face of the person in front of him perfectly. He dropped to his knees in front of Rory and put his hand on the side of his face. “Rory Williams—” The memory was there now, dim, but tangible. “You’re my boyfriend. You’re my fiancé. We’re going to get married tomorrow. I..I don’t….how could I forget you?” He curled his fingers around the back of Rory’s ear, through his hair.

 

“I—” said Rory. He was still struggling against the programming, the will that was not his own. “I—”

 

“Remember the ring?” Adrian asked, desperate to keep Rory with him. If he was slipping away, now? Well. Adrian wouldn’t let that happen. “You never let me wear it. You thought I would lose it, or get it dinged up. The Doctor still has it.”

 

“He—he gave it back to me,” said Rory. The words were hard to force out. The blankness was engulfing him, creeping though his mind, pushing him _out_.

 

“Show it to me,” said Adrian. “Just show me the ring.”

 

Rory looked down at his hands, and pulled them away from his stomach. He looked at them as though he couldn’t believe they were empty, as if they had betrayed him. “I had it—I did,” he said. “But…”

 

Adrian looked down as well. He noticed the box, sitting on the ground. “It’s—” he began, but he did not finish pointing it out; Rory jerked forward, and when Adrian looked back to his face, he was nearly gone. There was no trace of resistance anymore; just firm lines around his mouth. “Ror—”

 

There was a sharp pain in his stomach. Adrian’s mouth opened in an expression of shock and then the pain turned intense, and blinding. A noise escaped his mouth—a wheezed breath.

 

Rory’s face molded into confusion and then shock and then grief as he realized that he had lost his grip on his resistance, distracted by thoughts of the wedding ring he had gotten custom made, and for a lot more money than was reasonable for him to spend on a ring. No, not thoughts—memories. He forced away the creeping blankness, and it wasn’t even hard now; it was surprisingly easy to come back to himself now.

 

Rory caught Adrian as he fell into him, and slid down the rock to sit on the ground, cradling Adrian. “Oh, god,” he sobbed, one hand find the ring box on the ground and clutching it. “Adrian—oh, _god_ ,”

 

 

XXX

 

 

**Three Hundred and Twenty Seven**

 

Rory was nodding off, leaning against the Pandorica, when a sudden noise startled him to complete wakefulness.

 

Rory pulled his sword from its sheath and held it at ready. He stood slowly. “Who’s there?” he called.

 

The noise continued—the rock that sat on the entrance to the Pandorica’s underground room was being moved. It was a horrible grinding sound—rock on stone—but then it came to sudden halt, and became a softer, different sound—stone on dirt.

 

The rock was not pushed very far, however. Just far enough for a figure, only a black outline against the too bright light of Outside, where Rory had not been in _years,_ to squeeze through and then push the stone back in place as fast as he could, and as quietly as possible.

 

And with the disappearance of the sunlight that had been let in for a few moments by the rock being moved, they were thrown back into the dark.

 

The stranger turned his torch on. Rory noted that they had not yet been invented—in fact, not even batteries had existed the last time he had surfaced.

 

“What are you doing here?” Rory asked, preparing for a fight with this person of unknown intentions.

 

The person turned around; the beam of his torch like swung with him, hitting Rory directly in the face. He squinted.

 

“Well,” said the stranger. Rory noted he was male, or at least sounded male. Also, American. Or Rory thought it was an American accent. He was getting rather fuzzy on accents and voices. “You’re rather unexpected.”

 

“As are you,” said Rory. “What are you doing here?”

 

“Hiding from aliens,” said the man in a way that could have been sarcastic. Rory accepted the answer regardless but did not lower his sword. Taking this as a good sign, the man moved forward.

 

“Stay where you are,” Rory commanded him. The stranger stopped obediently, grinning. Rory narrowed his eyes at the stranger. “What are your intentions?”

  
“I was coming over to have a little chat,” shrugged the man.

 

“Well, that’s good for you,” said Rory, “But I’m protecting this. Can’t let you near it, sorry.”

 

“What’s inside it?”

 

“…something important,” said Rory, after a pause of how to word it. “Something very, very important.  But the more important question is how you’ve got a torch when they haven’t been invented yet.”

 

“Ahh,” said the man. “That’s not even the most advanced thing I’ve got!”

 

“Come from the future, do you?”

 

“ _Oh_ , yeah. Captain Jack Harkness, at your service.”

 

Something about the name was familiar, but Rory couldn’t place it. “I’m…Rory. The Lone Centurion.”

 

“Pleasure to meet you, Lone Centurion.”

 

“Under normal circumstances, I would say ‘likewise’, but I think that circumstances are rather un-normal at the moment.”

 

“No kidding,” laughed Jack. “I took a quick hop back to visit an old friend and next thing I know, the stars are going out.”

 

“Why don’t you just _hop_ back to your regular time?” Rory asked, figuring that Jack must have a vortex manipulator, like the Doctor had used over three hundred years ago, which had—before that—belonged to River.

 

“Well, stars going out, that’s pretty serious,” Jack said. “I figured I’d rather wait it out and let the Doctor fix it. Just this once, you understand. Do you know who that is? Brilliant guy, the Doctor.”

 

Rory lowered his sword. “You know the Doctor?”

 

“Traveled with him for a while,” Jack winked.

 

Anyone that had traveled with the Doctor must be trustworthy. Rory put his sword away, slowly. Jack sauntered over and plopped down beside Rory in front of the Pandorica. Rory, tense, sat down as well. He hadn’t had human contact in nearly fifty years, at this point—he’d run into a band of wanderers a while back—so he suddenly found himself unsure.

 

“So. What’s your story, Rory?” Jack asked, flicking off his torch and putting it into his pocket.

 

“It’s a long one,” said Rory.

 

“I’ve got a long time,” said Jack. “In fact, you could say I have forever.”

 

“I’ve got…a thousand and…seven hundred-some years,” Rory admitted. “Maybe it’s nearer to eight hundred-some? I’ve lost track.”

 

Jack laughed. “Well, tell away, then. Neither of us are going anyplace, it seems.”

 

 

XXX

 

 

**Seven**

 

“Amelia,” said Aunt Sharon. “You know that stars aren’t real—they’re just a fairy tale.”

 

“I know,” said Amelia. She continued to use her yellow marker to her heart’s content, though. Aunt Sharon’s words seemed to have had very little affect, as was usual these days. Just last week, Amelia had gone and cut her hair herself, practically _forcing_ Sharon to take her to the salon to get a proper cut, but now Amelia looked like a little boy so much more than before. She had never conformed to wearing skirts or dresses or bows or headbands before, but now her large t –shirts and raggedy shorts only served to drive that home even harder than before.

 

Sharon hadn’t even asked to raise her. She hadn’t wanted to—she’d never wanted children.

 

“It’s not like I want them to be real,” Amelia said, not realizing that her aunt was not paying attention. “I mean, that would mean I want fairy tales to be real, which I don’t, because I don’t want to be in a fairy tale.” She wrinkled her nose and capped her yellow marker, and then picked up her drawing and collected her markers from the coffee table and took it all up to her room to hang on her wall. Since Aunt Sharon didn’t want to buy wallpaper to cover the large crack on the wall across from her bed, Amelia had taken it upon herself to cover it up.

 

Well. It wasn’t that Aunt Sharon was unwilling to buy her wallpaper. It was just that she wanted to buy her wallpaper with flowers or teddy bears or hearts on it, which was exactly the opposite of what Amelia wanted—Amelia wanted stripes or plaid, or some other _boring_ pattern like that, if only to avoid having her wall plastered with flowers, because that would be worse than having the crack visible, having it covered in flowers instead.

 

When she tromped back down the steps, Amelia found a pamphlet on the floor in front of the door. There was writing on it in red pen. She flipped through, and then over to the back.

 

 _Come along, Pond!_ it said in red pen. Amelia studied it for a moment and then jumped over the welcome rug (which was lava, sometimes, in Amelia’s games) and stuck her head into the living room. Aunt Sharon was no longer there, so Amelia crossed the hallway to the kitchen.

 

“Aunt Sharon?” she said. “Can we go to the museum?”

 

 

XXX

 

The sides of the Pandorica—intricate circular patterns—lit up with a green light when Amelia touched it, and she stepped back, and then under the red rope that was supposed to keep museum visitors from touching the artifacts (which had not stopped Amelia, obviously.)

 

The glowing started at the center of the complex circular designs at the sides of the box as Amelia watched. Where the two edges met, a line began to glow, and then it grew wider as the two side panels slid apart. All the while, Amelia watched, until the Pandorica had opened completely, to reveal its interior: a metal seat, with metal walls all around, with lights and cuffs and a man gasping for breath, strapped in.

 

“What?” said Amelia. “Who are you? Why are you in there?”

 

“Right,” said Adrian, drawing in a deep breath through his nose and exhaling it in a large sigh from his mouth. “This is where it gets complicated. Help me out of here?”

 

Amelia stepped forward, ducked under the rope and stepped up, and then edged inside the Pandorica. She leaned over and attempted to get the wrist cuff undone.

 

“It won’t unstick,” she said.

 

“There’s something in my inside pocket—will you reach in and get it?” Adrian said. He nearly had his breath back now.

 

Amelia pulled open his coat and reached into the inside pocket. She pulled out the sonic screwdriver. “What’s this?” she said.

 

“Just press that little button on the side and point it at the lock,” Adrian told her. “Yeah, like—no, the other end.”

 

Once Adrian was free of the cuffs, Amelia handed him the screwdriver, which he put back into his inside coat pocket, and then stepped back to allow him the space to exist the Pandorica, which he did. Immediately, he fell over. He attempted to catch himself on the rope, which did nothing but give under his weight and allow him to crash to the floor.

 

“Owww,” he complained, face pressed to the cold floor of the museum, and then began to push himself back up.

 

“Are you alright?” asked Amelia, putting out a hand to help Adrian up. Adrian waved the hand off.

 

“Fine, fine, just fine. Gotta rest, the Doctor says.”

 

“What doctor?”

 

“He’s in here.” Adrian pointed to his head. “Left a message in my head like I’m an answerphone. Can you believe that?”

 

“Not really,” Amelia admitted.

 

“Me neither. I hadn’t known he could do things like that.”

  
“So who are you?”

 

“I’m, I’m Adrian, yeah.” He replied and looked around. “Where are we? Oh, wait, I know. National Museum, yeah? I was here once when I was a little….” He looked back at Amelia. “A little kid. Yeeahhh, complicated.” He pushed himself off the ground with his hands, and wobbled a moment before regaining his balance. “Let’s see, it’s…what? Nineteen ninety five?”

 

“Six,” replied Amelia.

 

“Something’s wrong,” said Adrian.

 

“If you say so.” Amelia watched as Adrian walked over to the wall when a display or a plaque (or perhaps just the beautiful paint) caught his attention. “Why were you in the Pandorica? It’s been closed for….maybe two thousand years.”

 

“It’s a long story,” said Adrian. He studied the display on the wall, which was a timeline of the Pandorica’s history. His eyes trailed down it. “A very, _very_ long story, apparently.”

 

Just then, a halting, metallic voice groaned out, “Ex….ter….min…a…teeee! Exterminate!”

 

Both Amelia and Adrian whirled around; Adrian hurried to place himself in front of Amelia, and keep her there with one hand.

 

“What’s that?” Amelia asked, feeling suddenly like all she had been doing that day was ask question that were all very similar. Well, it had been a rather confusing day, what with finding a man in an ancient box and all.

 

“It’s a Dalek,” said Adrian, voice low, as the Dalek rolled into sight but ten feet away. “Which means—”

 

A man burst into existence in front of them, between them and the Dalek, in a puff of smoke and electric buzzing.

 

“—trouble,” he said. He pointed at the Dalek. “Oh. That’s not good.” His face contorted. “Ew.”

 

“Exterminate!” screeched the Dalek, its voice rising in pitch.

 

“Doctor!” said Adrian, trying to get him back on topic. This failed. The Doctor turned around.

 

“Adrian! Two of you! Brilliant!” He grinned and did a little dance. “How are you, Adrian?”

 

“The Dalek!” Adrian reminded the Doctor.  

 

“Right! Right. Very right. Come along!” He darted around the side of the Pandorica. Adrian and Amelia followed.

 

“Exterminate!” screeched the Dalek. “Weapons systems restoring! Restorrrring!

 

“What are we going to do?” asked Amelia.

 

“I’m not sure yet,” said the Doctor, bumping into a display and nearly knocking it over. Adrian managed to catch it before it crashed to the floor. “I’ve got a plan. Well, most of a plan. Mainly, it involves not being trapped.”

 

“Which we are,” said Adrian. “Great.”

 

The Doctor brandished his wrist and him. “I have this!”

 

“And that means?”

 

“It means I can improvise,” said the Doctor.

  
And this is when the National Museum Security Guard showed up, torch in hand, just as he was bound to do, what with all the commotion. “What’s going on?” he called.

 

“That’s—” gasped Adrian.

 

“Yes!” said the Doctor.

 

Amelia frowned, feeling lost.

 

“Intruder will drop the devviiiice,” said the Dalek, turning around first its body and then its headpiece to face Rory.

 

“It’s not a weapon!” the Doctor yelled. “Scan it, it’s not a weapon, and you don’t have the energy stores to waste!”

 

“Scans indicate intruder unarrrmmmed,” said the Dalek. Rory laughed, not a very humorous sound, and  dropped his torch.

 

“Want to bet, you great big lump of space metal?” he asked. His hand slid open and he shot the Dalek twice, directly in the eyestalk. It screeched and rotated and rolled backwards and eventually died, with a great electronic screech, which rose to a very high pitch before winding down into silence.  

 

“Ha-haaa!” The Doctor laughed, practically dancing around the side of the Pandorica. “Rory!”

 

“Rory,” repeated Adrian.

 

“Adrian,” replied Rory. And somehow, then, the two thousand years were worth it.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“Adrian Pond,” said the Doctor, leaning forward from his seat in the Pandorica. “The boy who grew up with a crack in time and space in his wall, the universe seeping into his dreams every night. Adrian _Pond_.” He grinned. “ _Adrian Pond_.” Like the name itself was something special and precious.

 

Adrian closed his eyes, just briefly. The Doctor looked unearthly, just as he was, and painted (which he wasn’t) by the green glowing of the Pandorica. Odd shadows crossed his face and made him look unreal, untouchable, like he wasn’t actually there. It was as though he was an illusion.

“You’ll close the cracks,” said Adrian, reopening his eyes. “But you’ll be on the wrong side. You’ve got a plan, right? To get back. You always have a plan.”

 

“I have a bit of a plan,” said the Doctor with a slight shrug. “And it might work, but it might not, but that’s okay. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. You grew up with the universe in your dreams, in your head, in your mind—you brought Rory back. You’re special, you know.”

 

Adrian choked a bit on his sarcastic laughter. “Right,” he said.

 

“No, really.” The Doctor reached up and put his hand on the side of Adrian’s face. “Remember when I first asked you to travel with me?”

 

“That’s not something someone just forgets.”

 

“You asked me why you.”

 

“You were lonely,” Adrian repeated the roundabout answer the Doctor had given him so long ago.

 

“Yeah.” He was quiet for a moment. “Does it ever bother you?” The Doctor moved his hand to the back of Adrian’s neck and pulled him forward, like he was going to try to kiss Adrian; but instead he rested his forehead against Adrian’s. “The fact that your life makes no sense.”

 

“My life makes sense.”

 

“No, it really doesn’t,” the Doctor smiled. Adrian went a bit cross –eyed trying to look at him. “That big, empty house of yours. Where is everyone who lived in that house?”

 

“My aunt—”

 

“What about your parents, Adrian?”

 

The entire world shook. The light pouring inside from the large windows changed in its intensity.

 

“The beginning of the very end,” the Doctor grinned to himself. He pulled back from Adrian, and Adrian—finally able to get a good look at the Doctor—studied him for a bit.

 

“I lost my parents,” Adrian said after a moment. “You know that.”

 

“Yes. But tell me—how?”

 

“I…” Adrian realized he didn’t know. “I…I don’t even remember.”

 

“Shhh,” said the Doctor, his brow creasing at Adrian’s expression of guilt. “It’s not your fault. But, Adrian, all that time energy running around inside of you? You brought back Rory. You can bring back your parents, too. You can fix everything that was every wrong in your life.”

 

“That’s…” Adrian mumbled. “That’s…”

 

“Everything,” said the Doctor.

 

River put her hand gently on Adrian’s shoulder. Adrian jumped violently.

 

“Doctor, you have to go,” she said, softly, apologetically. The Doctor grinned. Adrian had no idea how he could be grinning just then.

“Of course,” said the Doctor. “I’m off, then. See you.” And, with a wink, he pressed a button on the vortex manipulator. The Pandorica shook and rocked back and forth as it slowly closed.

 

Unable to watch, Adrian backed up to Rory and buried his face in Rory’s shoulder.

 

“It’s okay,” said Rory, smoothing down Adrian’s hair. “It’s the Doctor. It’s always okay.”

 

 

 

XXX

 

 

**Twenty One**

 

Adrian woke slowly, coming to full awareness in a lazy manner. He opened his eyes when he was good and ready, about ten minutes later, after having lain in bed and focused on breathing. It was gone now, but he had the feeling that he’d just woken up from the strangest dream. Something to do with—with….oh, but it was gone now. But it had been very odd, very big, very…hmm. He was too sleepy to think that hard on it.

 

Just as he was drifting back into to sleep, his mother clattered into the room. “Morning!” she said. “Up and at ‘em, Adrian!”

 

Adrian sat straight up in bed. “Mum,” he said. Then, almost feeling surprise, right at the base of his ribcage, he repeated, “Mum. You’re my mum.”

 

“Of course I’m your mum,” she said in that no-nonsense way of hers, an offered him the tray of breakfast. “And this is your breakfast—your father made it, so if it’s complete rubbish, don’t feel afraid to tip it out the window.” When Adrian made no move to take the tray from her—only stared at her, taking in her red hair, which was faded now, but had been as bright as his when he’d been little, taking in her dressing gown (tattered, frayed. Old. She always wore it. Of course she always wore it), taking in the smile on her mouth and the lines around it and around her eyes—she placed it on the foot of his bed. “Downstairs in ten? Big day.” She kissed him hard, squarely on his forehead and hurried back out of his room.

 

“Of course she’s my mum,” said Adrian to himself after she had gone. He wasn’t sure why he had felt surprised to see her.

 

He turned to look at his pressed suit, hanging on the door of his closet. Dark blue. The shirt underneath was a pale, creamy tan, which was matching with Rory’s. The difference was that Rory would be wearing a tie while Adrian, on the other hand, would wear a bowtie.

 

But there was something bugging Adrian.

 

He climbed out of his bed, careful not to jostle his breakfast much, and stood in front of the mirror. Same old face, freckles and all. Same old red hair, short and sticking up on the side he had slept on it. Same old pajama shirt and pants.

 

 _That’s_ what was odd. He pulled off his pajama top and stared at his torso in the mirror, shocked, and unsure as to why exactly he was shocked. He’d always had a chest and stomach. Those weren’t anything knew.

 

He pulled down his pajama bottoms as well. Everything was accounted for.

 

“But that’s not weird at all,” he mumbled. “That’s perfectly normal.” He pulled his shirt back on and practically fell down the steps in his hurry to get downstairs.

 

“Ah, Adrian,” said his dad when he rounded the corner, through the doorway, into the living room. He was mostly dressed already, although his tie was undone. He still didn’t know how to tie them—mum always did them up for him, and complained loudly about it every time. That was old news, too, but the memory of it took Adrian by surprise. “I’m afraid I’m using the same jokes book as the best man—”

 

“You’re my dad,” Adrian said, a laugh bubbling up. “My funny, tiny little dad!” and he practically attacked his father with a hug. His father hugged him back. Adrian took note of the fact that he was an entire head taller than his father.

 

“I’m really not that funny,” protested Augustus. “See, I’m using a joke book.” He brandished the book as proof.

 

“Why are you acting as though you’ve never seen us before?” asked Tabitha. She turned to Augustus as Adrian pulled away. “One of these days, you will learn to tie your own tie,” she told him seriously as she took his tie and began to do it up for him, anyway.

 

“What if I just like it when you tie it for me?” laughed Augustus. He put his arms around Tabitha, who giggled and gave him a quick kiss.

 

Adrian looked on, grinning, and then hurried back upstairs. He was getting married in a matter of hours, now, but there was still something bugging him.

 

“Rory?” Adrian said when Rory answered his mobile with a muffled _‘hullo’_. “Do you ever feel like you’re missing something? No, not missing something. Like there’s something on the tip of your tongue that you can’t remember—no. That there’s something so incredibly huge and important in your head, but for the life of you, you can’t remember what?”

 

“…yeah?” said Rory.

 

And Adrian had to smile a little and ask, “Are you just saying that because you’re scared of me?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Love you.”

 

“Yeah—yeah! I mean, love you too.”

 

Adrian hit the ‘end call’ button, feeling happy (because lately, just talking to Rory for several seconds made him happier than almost anything) despite the fact that the conversation hadn’t helped him remember anything at all.

 

Well. It would have to be a problem for another time, Adrian decided as he stood up from his bed and once again approached his closet, this time to get dressed for the wedding rather than to stare at his own chest.

 

 

XXX

 

 

“Now, it hardly seems a year since Adrian was a little boy,” said Augustus, standing as he began his speech after a quick revision of jokes. “The majority of you may remember the wonderfully creative stories he came up with then—The Raggedy Doctor and his blue time machine was the favorite.”

 

There was a soft laugh from the majority of the crowd (or at least those who remembered Adrian’s imaginary friend.) Adrian smiled a bit, and so did Rory. But then Adrian stopped smiling, trying to place the vague sense of deja-vu he got from the mention of the Raggedy Doctor. There was something there, but it wasn’t something that Adrian could grasp.

 

Something of that must have showed on Adrian’s face. Rory leaned over. “Adrian?” he asked. “Are you alright? You’re….you’re crying.”

 

“I am?” he touched his face. It was damp. He wiped away the tears, and looked at Rory. “….have we done that before?”

 

“Done what?”

 

Adrian shook his head. “No, I just…it’s deja-vu. Have you have told me I was crying before and I hadn’t realized?”

 

“I don’t think so,” said Rory.

 

“Why am I crying?”

 

Rory smiled. “You’re happy, probably. Happy Mr. Williams.”

 

Adrian laughed, hiccupped, and started crying a bit harder. “I’m still Mr. Pond, and you know that. But, no, I don’t feel happy. I feel sad. Really, really sad. I don’t know why.”

 

“Great,” said Rory. “Well. Maybe it’s just because you’re leaving your childhood behind. No more Raggedy Doctor, no more wild all-nighters. You’ve gotta be a responsible adult now.”

 

“Yeah,” said Adrian. “That’s…that’s probably it.”

 

After all, Adrian couldn’t think of any other reason.

 

“…and when he was six, he was convinced that his new teacher wasn’t real because she looked like a cartoon!”

 

There was laughter from the guests. Adrian didn’t feel like laughing at his dad’s joke.

 

“But those days of childhood are gone now,” Augusts continued. “Our little boy has grown up. He’s gained maturity, he’s gained many life skills, and he’s found love, just like the rest us hope to find. And I, as his father, find that….”

 

Adrian closed his eyes, leaned against Rory’s shoulder as his father spoke his closing words of acceptance. There was cheering and clapping which he and Rory joined in on, but Adrian kept his head on Rory’s shoulder. He was getting a headache in his temples and behind his eyes; he was still forgetting something, something huge.

 

Brian stood when the applause died down and made a speech of his own, which was short and to the point but still managed to make everyone cry, Rory especially. And then, with a final toast from a few friends and others who wanted to share small anecdotes or to give Rory and Adrian their well wishes in public, the dinner turned into a dance.

 

“There’s still something I’m forgetting,” Adrian said to Rory, after they’d danced like crazy for nearly two hours. Adrian, for one, was exhausted; everyone wanted to dance with them. But now that they had a break, Adrian remembered that he was forgetting something.

 

“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Rory said. His arm was around the back of the chair that Adrian was slumped in. (“Don’t slouch—everyone is looking at us,” Rory had said. Adrian had replied, “It’s my wedding. I can do what I want,” which Rory hadn’t had an adequate argument against. He couldn’t even argue that Adrian would rumple his nice, tailored navy suit because Adrian would just shrug and tell him they’d take it to the cleaner’s. Or maybe he’d grin and wiggle his eyebrows about and remind Rory it’d get ruined some other way that evening anyway.)

 

“You don’t feel it too?” Adrian frowned at Rory. Rory shook his head. “Are you sure?”

 

“I think I’d know if I couldn’t remember something,” Rory chuckled. 

 

“You never know what you’ll forget, though,” Adrian said. When Rory didn’t take this seriously and laughed instead, Adrian joined in.

  
“Do you remember, when we were seven?” Adrian asked, a memory suddenly coming to him. “And I was afraid of that crack in my wall?” He grinned and shook his head. “I was a ridiculous kid.”

 

“That we can agree on,” said Rory, “But I don’t remember there ever being a crack in your wall.”

 

“Hmmmm,” said Adrian and thought about it for a moment. “Are you sure?”

 

“Pretty sure.”

 

“But I could swear...oh well.”

 

The DJ announced over the sound system that the next song was one for the happy couple.

 

“I guess that means we have to dance again,” said Adrian, but not really complaining.

 

Rory stood as a sweet slow song began to play and the people on the dance floor began to clear off.

 

“May I have this dance?” Rory asked Adrian, looking very serious. Adrian laughed and took his hand and allowed himself to be pulled up from his chair and onto the dance floor. He knew they’d do little more than swaying, rather than actual dancing, because neither of them actually knew how to dance, but still. It was the idea that counted.

 

 

XXX

 

**Sixty Eight**

 

Years and years and years later, after a long and happy married life, when they were both old and grey and wrinkled and spotted, Adrian said to Rory over breakfast, “I think I’m still forgetting something important.”

 

And Rory smiled the same smile as always, fond, and said, “You always say that, but you never actually forget anything important. You always make it to appointments and remember our anniversary.”

 

“And your birthday,” Adrian added, laughing.

 

“And your own,” Rory laughed as well.

 

“But really,” said Adrian insisted, just as he had for years. “I’m serious. What is it that I can never remember? It’s always so frustrating…”

 

“It’ll come back to you someday,” Rory reassured him, leaning across the table to give him a quick kiss. “You know it will.”

 

**The End**


End file.
